An Orleans County man beat and burned a disabled adult in his legal custody, according to the Vermont State Police.
Raymond Gadreault, 71, was arrested Wednesday on charges of aggravated domestic assault, abuse of a vulnerable person and cruelty to a person in his custody.
He appeared in court Thursday and was being held in Northern State Correctional Facility in Newport on $75,000 bail.
The alleged incidents took place between July and September, state police said, in an Orleans County town.
There, the man in Gadreault’s custody, who is in his 40s, said Gadreault had burned his hands and feet with a cigarette, punched him in the groin and eye, thrown him into deep water and deprived him of sleep, according to police records.
VTDigger does not identify victims of domestic abuse, and is not publishing the man’s specific age or the location where the alleged events occurred.
Troopers began investigating Gadreault after they were called to the home on Sept. 16. Gadreault had called them to report the man in his custody for slamming a chair against a window outside, records show.
Gadreault told troopers the man has an intellectual and developmental disability and had been in his custody since July.
When state police arrived, they found the man outside with bruising on his torso, back, feet and shins, as well as around an ear and an eye. He was crying in pain and cold, state police said.
They called an ambulance, which took him to a nearby hospital.
Gadreault and his wife told troopers that the 71-year-old had recently used “hard restraints” to control the man when he’d “act out,” according to police records, and that’s where some of the bruising came from.
Gadreault told police he had never struck the man, and said some of the man’s injuries were either self inflicted or already there when he came into his custody.
Troopers spoke to the two EMTs who’d taken the man to the hospital. One told troopers the man said Gadreault hit him daily, according to court documents. The other EMT said she had responded to the residence before to provide medical care to the man’s mother, who said the man was being abused.
Police asked a doctor whether the man’s injuries could be self inflicted. The doctor said some of the scrapes could have been self inflicted, but the large bruises were more consistent with an assault, according to court papers. The doctor also told police the injuries would have healed by then if the man had suffered them in July, as Gadreault had claimed.
One witness told police the man had told him he was frightened. “I’m scared … I need a safe house, safe from Ray,” he said, according to court papers.
The man also told the witness that Gadreault had burned him with a cigarette, according to police records.
When troopers interviewed the man, he asked them to protect him from Gadreault. He said Gadreault hits him and puts cigarettes out on his hand. A trooper looked at the man’s hands and saw small, circular scars about a quarter-inch wide, consistent with the end of a cigarette, records show.
A trooper asked Gadreault to sit down for an interview with police and a representative from Adult Protective Services in October, which Gadreault refused, according to records.
About three weeks later, troopers tried to cite Gadreault on the assault and abuse charges.
According to their account, Gadreault and his wife refused to answer the door or even acknowledge state police were there. Troopers said they knocked on the window in front of Gadreault, but he remained seated at a computer, ignoring them and two dogs that had begun to bark.
Troopers received a warrant, and arrested him a week later.
How the man came into Gadreault’s custody is unclear in the police records. A trooper spoke with an Adult Protective Services investigator, who said that Gadreault had applied for custody of the man after telling the agency that the man’s mother had sexually abused the man.
However, around the same time that Gadreault talked to the agency, the investigator told the trooper, the man told the agency that Gadreault had been slapping his genitals.
Read the story on VTDigger here: Orleans County man allegedly beat disabled adult in his custody.