Jurors find Jupiter father guilty of aggravated child abuse for locking teen in room in garage

WEST PALM BEACH — Jurors on Thursday found a Jupiter father guilty of aggravated child abuse after police said he and his wife confined one of their four children to a locked room in his garage for hours at a time.

The six-person jury also found Timothy Ferriter guilty of false imprisonment and child neglect. Circuit Judge Howard Coates will decide Ferriter's sentence on Nov. 16. He faces up to 40 years in prison.

Ferriter chose not to testify in his own defense. His team relied on testimony from family friends and a child psychologist, who described his behavior as misguided but not criminal.

After the verdict, Ferriter briefly hugged and consoled his wife, Tracy, before court deputies led him away.

Tracy Ferriter faces a separate trial on abuse allegations involving the same child. She sat in the courtroom for most of her husband's trial. She did not speak to reporters as she left the courtroom.

The Palm Beach Post is not identifying the victim either by name or gender.

Palm Beach Post investigation: A couple kept a child locked in the garage. Their lawyer says they had no choice

Jupiter father plans to appeal verdict, seek release from jail

In a trial that garnered national attention, including live coverage by Court TV, the state presented testimony from the teenager at the center of the abuse allegations, the teen's older sibling and child psychiatrist Dr. Wade Myers, who told jurors that the Ferriters' treatment of the child was malicious, cruel and psychologically damaging.

But perhaps the most powerful pieces of evidence were video recordings of the child inside the garage structure, Assistant State Attorney Brianna Coakley said. The state closed its case by showing jurors hours of video footage from Ring camera recordings. In the footage, the teen could be heard at times crying while alone in the structure.

“We had really credible witness testimony in this case, but there’s absolutely nothing better than being able to show the jury exactly what happened and let them see it for it themselves," Coakley said after the verdict.

Defense attorney Prya Murad said Ferriter intends to appeal the verdict. She said the defense will also seek to have Ferriter placed on house arrest.

Ferriter, 48, rejected a plea offer from the state that would have sent him to prison to two years, followed by five years of probation.

During the trial, the defense presented its own video evidence, showing the teen playing outside and interacting with other family members while inside the home. In one video, the teen could be seen watching a college football game with Timothy Ferriter.

“I think as the jury saw in the videos that the defense presented, there was a life for this child outside of that room," Murad said. "I wish we had been able to convince the jury of that more, but perhaps on appeal. "

Regarding the verdict, Murad said Ferriter was "obviously very upset, but he’s respectful and appreciates the time that the jury put into this."

Prosecutors: Jupiter family's home life looked normal but was abusive

An issue for the jury to decide was whether Ferriter's actions rose to the level of child abuse or neglect.

Jupiter police arrested the Ferriters in February 2022 saying the couple kept the child confined for multiple hours at a time in a windowless 8-by-8-foot structure built in the garage of their Egret Landing home.

In her closing remarks, Coakley described a child's life that appeared normal to those on the outside, but inside the home was anything but normal.

She spoke of a pattern of abusive behavior against the child during the Ferriters' nearly five years in Arizona that continued about five to six weeks after the family returned to Jupiter in late December 2021. They had lived in Palm Beach Gardens and Jupiter prior to moving west.

“This treatment, this systemic way in which (the teen) was forced to live, is a crime," Coakley said. "It’s not every moment of the day. There were lots of times when they looked like a normal family. It’s what happened behind closed doors is why we are here."

Investigators discovered the structure after the teen ran away from home in January 2022. The teen was found days later outside Independence Middle School. During their search, police visited the Ferriters' home and asked to see the teen's bedroom. The search led them to the garage.

What it means: Jupiter parents say adopted teen locked in garage room had attachment disorder

Investigators said the garage structure could be opened only from the outside. Mounted on its ceiling was a doorbell camera, where the family could monitor the movements of the person inside, according to police reports.

The teenager was provided with a bucket to use as a toilet, police said when they charged the couple with aggravated child abuse and false imprisonment. The Palm Beach County State Attorney's Office later added a charge of child neglect against Timothy Ferriter.

The teenager, who is now in 10th grade, testified last week that being locked in the garage structure was "dehumanizing."

Defense: Parents made mistakes with teen but did nothing criminal

Murad said the parents struggled in dealing with the teen, who was adopted as a toddler from an orphanage in Vietnam, due to the teen's long-standing behavioral issues. Murad told jurors that Ferriter exhibited poor judgment in responding to the teenager's behavior but did not commit a crime.

The teen had a history of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, and a condition known as reactive attachment disorder, Tracy Ferriter told investigators prior to her arrest. The disorder keeps children from forming bonds with their family members, and it can lead them to act out or make it difficult for children to accept love.

"This was a poor effort at parenting a child that had issues that the parents didn’t understand," Murad said.

Timothy and Tracy Ferriter told Jupiter police that the teen lied, stole, attacked family members and threatened classmates. The room was a means to discipline the teen and protect other people in the household from harm, they said.

Murad told jurors that the couple tried to get help from therapists, doctors and schools, to no avail.

"The idea that these parents were not involved and not trying is distant from the facts," she said.

During their deliberations, jurors returned to the courtroom to listen to testimony given last week by the teenager's older sibling. The sibling testified from a separate courtroom, appearing over a video feed in the main courtroom. Coates noted difficulties in hearing the sibling's testimony over the video feed and instructed the court to replay the audio recorded from the courtroom the sibling appeared in.

The sibling, who is also adopted, told jurors that the teen at the center of the abuse allegations was treated differently from the other children in the home, including sleeping in a similar garage structure in the family's home in Arizona.

Julius Whigham II is a criminal justice and public safety reporter for The Palm Beach Post. You can reach him at jwhigham@pbpost.com and follow him on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, at @JuliusWhigham. Help support our work: Subscribe today.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Jupiter dad who kept teen in garage guilty of aggravated child abuse