By Tim Jue / Beat Staff Writer

Kelly Schumacher

UPDATED 12/4/2008 11:13AM PST: New link to KGO-TV Reporter Alan Wang’s web blog on his exclusive interview with Lau added.

The 17 year-old boy that escaped from a suburban house in Tracy, Calif. where he was held captive for up to a year had been chained to a living room coffee table, beaten with an aluminum bat, and frequently went without bathing for weeks, according to new revelations that San Francisco television station KGO-TV reported Wednesday night.

In an exclusive interview with KGO-TV reporter Alan Wang from inside the maximum security wing of the San Joaquin County Jail, Kelly Lau Schumacher, the Girl Scout leader who was arrested by Tracy Police as a co-conspirator in the gruesome child abuse case, said that the abused boy would occasionally be chained to a coffee table while Lau, her husband Michael and their children went about their day.

Lau said that she beat the boy several times in the stomach, the arm and used a bat to strike the boy’s knees, KGO-TV reported. The former Girl Scout Leader said that she was following through on orders to discipline the boy that were given by Caren Ramirez, a family acquaintance who had been living in the house for more than a year.

Ramirez is reported to be the boy’s legal guardian.

Caren Ramirez

Lau, 30, also said Ramirez would heat the aluminum bat in the fireplace and used it to burn the boy, KGO-TV reported. The Schumacher family was told by Ramirez to not feed the boy, and that only she was able to give him food.

The boy would also be bathed outdoors once or twice a week, Lau said, when he would have a pitcher of hot water thrown on him and hosed down with the garden hose.

While the boy had been beaten sporadically, the frequency of those beatings increased during the late summer, she said. The boy was being beaten daily as the fall season neared.

Michael Schumacher

Michael Schumacher, 34, the husband of Kelly, also participated in the beating of the boy, KGO-TV reported. It is unclear the extent of what he did, or what role the children of the family played in the boy’s captivity.

Lau said that the boy escaped Monday afternoon when he ran out the door while she was watching television with her children.

The boy hopped over an eight-foot metal wall, ran into a nearby Sports Club and pleaded for help from front-desk clerks, claiming that someone would be coming to get him and hurt him.

Employees at the club said that he was bloodied, beaten and filthy when he appeared inside the club. He had been covered in dirt and soot wearing nothing but a pair of boxers.

The boy said he had been tortured and held captive for more than a year.

These disturbing new revelations come on a day that was marked by the arrest of Ramirez at a friend’s house in Berkeley, Calif. Wednesday morning after Tracy Police implicated her as the “missing link” as to how and why the boy ended up in the Tennis Lane two-story home.

The boy, whose name has not been released by detectives because of his age, had been under the custody of the Sacramento County Child Protective Services before he ran away from a group home in 2007. He had been listed as missing until this weekend.

On Wednesday, the boy was returned to Sacramento County CPS.

Lau, Schumacher and Ramirez will be arraigned this afternoon at the San Joaquin County Superior Courthouse in Stockton, Calif. They are all facing charges of torture, kidnapping and child abuse.

Online Resources:

ON ABC7NEWS.COM: Watch KGO-TV Reporter Alan Wang’s story on his exclusive jailhouse interview with Kelly Lau Schumacher

Read Wang’s Web Blog for more details of his interview

ON SacBee.com: The return of the 17 year-old boy back to Sacramento County CPS

ON SFGate.com: How the story developed Monday Afternoon