Boy, 7, was tortured to death and fed to pigs. State agencies failed him, says lawsuit.

Boy, 7, was tortured to death and fed to pigs. State agencies failed him, says lawsuit.

Adrian Jones’s short, tortured life was spent isolated from outsiders, confined in filthy, move-in rested houses where he was “home-schooled” by the parents who ultimately killed him, according to court documents.

But the abuse he suffered at the hands of his father and stepmother was meticulously documented, through dozens of surveillance cameras.

 As his family moved from place to place across Kansas and Missouri, his stepmother captured photos of the horrors, images stored online and later recovered by authorities.

His was a brief life of great suffering, as described by police and prosecutors. The story has been extensively reported by the Kansas City Star and other local media, including KSHB.

In several instances, Adrian was shown strapped to a table and blindfolded, or standing in neck-deep water in the family’s dirty swimming pool overnight. 

In other photographs, his mouth looks bloody and bruised, his teeth rotting, his hands swollen from being restrained, the Kansas City Star reported. 

In another picture, Adrian appears to be tied up with a plate of food in front of him, a bar of soap in his mouth.

Alongside one of the images, reportedly captured from a surveillance camera by the stepmother, there appeared two words: the boy.

During his final days in fall 2015, the young boy was trapped in a white-tiled shower stall and left to die, according to affidavits cited by the Associated Press. 

Prosecutors later said Adrian essentially starved to death. His body was fed to pigs, authorities said. 

The young boy’s remains were found in a livestock pen on the family’s property on Nov. 20, 2015.

His father, Michael Jones, told authorities he purchased the swine after keeping the body inside the home for nearly two weeks, the AP reported. 

A child told investigators he heard Adrian screaming “I’m going to die” through a vent and his stepmother, Heather Jones, telling him to “suck it up.”

Michael and Heather Jones both pleaded guilty last year to first-degree murder and were sentenced to life in prison.

Investigators referred to the child abuse case as one of the “worst things” they had ever seen. 

His disturbing case prompted a state lawmaker to introduce legislation that would penalize adults who fail to report child abuse at home.

 In the Kansas City area, Adrian became known, hideously, as “the boy who was fed to pigs.”

But with his killers behind bars, Adrian’s family has been left wondering — could the state have done more to prevent the boy’s death?

Records in both Missouri and Kansas reveal a “seemingly endless series of reports and hotline calls” that informed social service and child welfare agencies of the abuse Adrian suffered.

So alleged a wrongful-death lawsuit filed in both states this week by Adrian’s biological mother, maternal grandmother, and oldest sister. It contends that child service agencies failed to keep Adrian out of harm’s way.

“Despite all the warning signs, the hotline calls, and the evidence of the child’s mistreatment, they effectively allowed his father and stepmother to continue to abuse, torture, and ultimately murder the little boy, while they stood idly by, writing it all down,” the family’s lawyer claimed in the lawsuit.

The lawsuit alleges that the state’s intervention was “limited” to instructing Adrian’s father and stepmother to sign a piece of paper agreeing to stop abusing the boy — “the legal equivalent of a ‘pinky swear.’”

“As it turned out, that signed paper might as well have been A.J.’s death warrant,” the family’s lawyer, Michaela Shelton, wrote. The lawsuit asks for $25 million in damages.

Representatives from the Kansas Department for Children and Families declined to comment to the Kansas City Star. 

But a spokeswoman previously released a statement about the case, saying that the agency followed the family as Michael and Heather Jones “worked constantly to evade our intervention.”

“This family moved frequently between Kansas and Missouri, which greatly disrupted continuity of services and evaluation,” the spokeswoman said in a statement to KSHB. 

Officials in both states remained in regular contact, shared information and continued to talk to the family, the spokeswoman said, adding that child welfare workers thoroughly investigated each reported incident of alleged abuse and neglect.

“It is very difficult to assist families who are constantly transient, especially those who move across state lines and thereby deprive the State of any jurisdiction,” the statement read.

For Adrian’s first two years of life, he lived with his biological mother and siblings in Lawrence, Kan. After the toddler was found at home unsupervised, he was removed from his mother’s home and placed in the custody of his father.

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