Hailey Burns was reunited with her family after being missing for more than a year. Source: WSB-TV
By Debbie Schipp
The teenager reunited with her family after more than a year was reportedly starved by her captor and made to perform sexual acts in exchange for food, a police warrant reveals.
Hailey Burns, 17, "was confined in an upstairs bedroom and told she'd be arrested if sheleft", according to the Gwinnett Daily Post.
The teenager went missing on May 2016, from her home near Charlotte, North Carolina.
Her parents said on the night she went missing that they woke to find the front door unlocked and believe Hailey had walked out and been picked up a little more than a kilometre from her home.
Her alleged captor, Michael Ren Wysolovksi, 31, has been charged with aggravated sodomy, cruelty to children, deprivation in the first degree, interference with custody and false imprisonment. He remains in custody.
Most of the neighbours of the property where Hailey was found said they'd never met Wysolovksi. Some assumed they were just a quiet couple who kept to themselves.
Some reported seeing Hailey bringing groceries into the house. But what was happening in the house was far from normal.
Police said she was blocked from moving around the house by a floor-to-ceiling gate.
Burns restricted what she ate to keep her "gaunt", and the pair had met in a chatroom for people struggling with eating issues, deputy chief assistant district attorney in Gwinnett County Tracie Cason told the Charlotte Observer.
Hailey was missing for more than a year before a Facebook tip led to her rescue. Photo / FBI
Additional warrants allege Wysolovski kept a food journal detailing how many calories Hailey had eaten each day, and if she had eaten more than he thought she should, she would not be fed the next day.
On some occasions, she was told to perform oral sex in exchange for food, according to the warrants.
Wysolovski faces life in prison if found guilty.
Hailey's family have praised her return as a "miracle", but say their daughter has been "changed" by her experience, and have asked for privacy.
"She is not the same person that left and that is the hardest part of this," Shaunna Burns told wscotv's Channel 9.
Family friend and spokesman Tom McNamara said Hailey has not been diagnosed with an eating disorder and was involved in a lot of chatrooms at the time of her disappearance.
He said Hailey's recovery would be lengthy, but she was getting better by the day with her family.
Hailey was rescued after she met a woman online and sent her pictures to help police work out where she was being held. That woman contacted her parents, who then contacted police and the FBI.
