Shannon Eckley walked into her local grocery store with one intention. She wanted to be arrested.
Stealing a chocolate bar, she hoped, would put her in jail and her five-year-old daughter would have to go into care.
Nothing could be worse than the misery they had both endured for two years.
In a barbaric ordeal described as “modern-day slavery”, 31-year-old Shannon was held captive in dark, damp basement shared with snakes and scorpions.
She was forced into sex acts, made to eat dog food, threatened daily and had to perform all the menial household chores.
She was even bullied into beating up her own daughter so it could be recorded on video and used as blackmail to stop her escaping.
Incredibly, her tormentors would inflict serious injuries on her simply so they could steal the strong painkilling drugs she was given in hospital, leaving Shannon in agony for weeks.
After a 15-month investigation by the FBI, her captors have now been convicted of forced labour and other charges. And this week the chief bully was jailed for 30 years.
The nightmare began when Shannon – who cannot be pictured to protect the identify of her daughter – was enticed into the family home where Jordie Callahan, 27, lived with his girlfriend Jessica Hunt, 33, and Hunt’s four sons.
Once inside the squalid apartment in Ashland, Ohio, Callahan pointed a gun at her head and threatened to kill her if she didn’t do exactly as she was told.
Mentally vulnerable after a brain injury when she was young, Shannon was helpless to stop the twisted couple controlling every aspect of her life.
They kept her and her daughter petrified by threatening to unleash a terrifying menagerie of pets including a poisonous coral snake, a Burmese python weighing more than nine stone, lizards, spiders, scorpions and “numerous” dogs including pitbulls.
Callahan wired up an elaborate CCTV system to monitor his two hostages, watching their every move and listening to their conversations.
Whenever Callahan wanted a sex act she was forced to submit to him. She even had to wear a dog collar as she crawled around and was made to eat the same food as his pets.
She was often left for days in the dark with snakes and reptiles free to roam the basement all around her.
Callahan and Hunt also roped in two friends to join in the torture. Daniel Brown, 35, and Dezerah McGuire, 33, helped keep Shannon and her daughter locked up and the four cashed in their slave’s monthly benefit payments for themselves.
A year into her ordeal, in August 2011, Callahan and Hunt ordered McGuire to smash Shannon’s hand with a rock so she would need urgent medical attention.
The only respite Shannon got from her basement dungeon was when she was forced to cook, clean up the apartment or pick up the foul-smelling mess left by the animals.
Then in October 2012, once again given specific instructions to buy the family’s groceries, she decided to steal a chocolate bar in plain view hoping it would lead to her arrest and imprisonment.
When police were called she told them she was living with Callahan and Hunt and that they “were mean to her”.
An officer went to the apartment where, as promised, he was shown the “child abuse” video.
Still too afraid to speak out, Shannon was charged with child endangerment and convicted.
But eventually she did pluck up the courage to speak out, sparking to the FBI’s investigation in her slave masters.
All four were convicted in March of offences including forced labour, conspiracy to defraud the US state and illegally acquiring prescription drugs.
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