SALON

Wednesday, Jul 11, 2012 6:30 PM UTC

W.Va. man accused of enslaving, torturing wife

By

Topics: From the Wires,

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. (AP) — Authorities say a West Virginia man tortured and enslaved his wife for much of the past decade, forcing her to endure two pregnancies and deliveries in shackles.

A criminal complaint against Peter Lizon, 37, says one of those babies was stillborn and buried on the family farm in Leroy. The other survived but apparently has never had any medical care.

Lizon was in jail Wednesday on $300,000 bond. He was scheduled for a preliminary hearing on a malicious wounding charge Friday morning in Jackson County Magistrate Court.

Chief Deputy Tony Boggs said 43-year-old Stephanie Lizon endured more suffering than virtually any domestic violence victim he’s seen.

“This appears to go beyond abuse to what I would consider torture,” he said. “Her injuries are much more than just getting pushed up against the wall. She’s been abused almost to the point of slavery and torture.”

The complaint says the wife was burned on her back and breasts with irons and frying pans, and had her foot smashed with a piece of farm equipment, among other things.

Shawn Bayliss, Peter Lizon’s attorney, said the allegations made by an acquaintance of Stephanie Lizon are “the fabrication of a fertile imagination or a feeble mind, one of the two.”

“The wife had a conversation with someone, and that person has taken that story and turned it into something completely different,” he said. “Stephanie would say this story is absolutely untrue, and the charges levied against her husband are blatantly false.”

He compared it to the childhood game of “telephone,” where something whispered from one person to another ultimately bears no resemlance to reality.

“This is a situation where a person has taken a nugget of information, taken an acorn and tried to turn it into a tree,” he said. “And the tree won’t support this story.”

The details of the wife’s alleged abuse came out after she fled from her husband July 2 and took refuge at a Family Crisis Intervention Center in Parkersburg. Her husband had taken her to a rental store to return a rototiller. The wife fled to a Zumba dance center nearby, hiding until shelter workers could get her.

At the shelter, she told another woman about the abuse she’d suffered at the hands of her husband, a native of the Czech Republic. The wife said her family was from Alexandria, Va.

The witness described the woman as “gaunt and filthy,” and covered in scars, bruises and burns. She had scar tissue on her wrists and ankles, “mutilated and swollen” feet, a scar in the shape of a clothes iron on one breast, and burns on her back that the victim said came from a hot frying pan.

The witness said the wife was called a “slave” and ordered to kneel before her husband every time she entered a room.

The wife also told the woman she delivered a fully developed, stillborn child while in shackles, and her husband buried the corpse on their farm. Another child survived a similar delivery, but Stephanie Lizon said it had never received medical attention.

Boggs said state child-welfare authorities have been notified, but Peter Lizon’s attorney said the child remains with his mother.

The sheriff’s department had no history of contact with the family, Boggs said, but investigators confirmed that the wife was treated in the emergency room of St. Joseph’s Hospital in June.

The complaint also says the evidence includes 45 color photographs taken to document his wife’s injuries during her stay at the shelter. A Sunbeam iron was among the items seized during a July 5 search of the couple’s home. Lizon was arrested that day.

Boggs said Peter Lizon was arrested in Maryland in 2004, accused of cutting up Bush-Cheney campaign signs with a bayonet. The couple was apparently living in Randallstown, Md., at the time.

The Baltimore Sun reported that Lizon was sentenced to a year of probation and 32 hours of community service, and ordered to pay $328 in restitution to the Howard County Republican Party.

A message left for the Office of the State Attorney in Howard County wasn’t immediately returned, so it’s unclear whether he has any other criminal history there.

Boggs, meanwhile, said he hopes that the wife’s escape will give courage to other people who may be trapped in abusive relationships.

“There’s all kinds of people out there who are willing to help,” he said.

___

Online:

W.Va. Coalition Against Domestic Violence: http://bit.ly/LfiY0i

More Vicki Smith.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 0 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: So long, Sookie Stackhouse

Recommendations