A Minnesota couple is alleged to have chained their two sons, aged eight and five, in their bedrooms, and deprived of food by their parents. They were only allowed to leave to go to school.

The five year old was chained by the ankle, day and night, to a crib with no mattress. Unable to free himself, even to go to the bathroom, the boy s room reeked of urine, according to police investigators.

Police found the boy’s mattress leaning against the wall. He’d been sleeping on the board at the bottom of the crib. His mother told the investigators that she removed the mattress because the five-year-old had picked at the mattress and ripped it, so she forced him to sleep on the board.

Arrested were the boy’s father, 33-year-old Brian Miller, and his 26-year-old wife Charity Miller, a nurse at a senior facility in Rochester.

Charity Miller said she knew it was wrong to chain a child to the bed.

Both parents are now charged with seven counts of child abuse, child neglect, malicious punishment of a child and false imprisonment. Investigators say that the gross misdemeanors could be upgraded to felonies after the physical examinations of the children are completed.

Police say that both children are very small for their ages, possibly due to malnourishment and ill-treatment at the hands of their parents.