Charges laid after brothers kept in cellar without food A father and stepmother have been charged after the man's sons were found to have been living in a cold, dark cellar while their stepbrothers were "spoiled" in the family's home upstairs. The boys, age 10 and 12, spent three years in "hell" after their father began a relationship with a woman who had two sons of her own, age seven and 17. The father's boys were forced to sleep "amid their own detritus" and without covers on two small mattresses slung on to a concrete floor in a cellar with no windows, electricity, running water or lavatory. The boys said they were allowed out by day to attend a state school but, once home, they were not allowed to live or eat with the rest of the family. Instead, they were shut up in the cellar, where their father regularly beat them with a belt. The room was never cleaned and sometimes they were not given food. Judicial sources said it appeared the boys' suffering began in earnest when their biological mother, a drug addict, left home and the father moved in with his new, unemployed partner. The eldest of the two mistreated boys went to police last week, saying he could no longer take seeing his little brother beaten. Police were shocked at the "appalling conditions" in which the children had been living. The father and stepmother were charged with "violence against minors, neglect and food deprivation." The boys have been placed in a foster home.