John Raymon was a young boy when his mother whipped him with a vacuum cord, broke his teeth and made him sleep outside on trash bags.

The abuse shaped his view of the world. He got in fights and stole. He bounced from home to home and ended up in a facility for troubled kids. It took him months to trust his new family, and even today Raymon said he can't fully trust anyone.

He is a defensive lineman for Syracuse, where fans have been waiting to watch him since he transferred from Iowa last year. He was one of the best high school prospects in Pennsylvania when he left for Iowa, but he never played. He sat out last season because of NCAA transfer rules, and he's expected to be a key reserve for the Orange.

For now, football is an escape from his past.

He doesn't remember much, not even his mother's name. He's been able to access medical and psychological records detailing his past since his 18th birthday, but state agencies and his foster parents agree Raymon should not read the file until he finishes college.

"I just want to see," Raymon said, "and just get it over with."

Interviews and social service documents substantiate claims of Raymon's abuse as a child, but details are based on his account of events and information from his foster parents.

This much is certain:

Raymon's earliest memory is being placed in a psychiatric hospital at age 3 after he lit curtains on fire. He was taken from his mother as early as 4, and he lived in almost a dozen homes before age 12. His father, who he never knew, was deported to Trinidad.

The police came to the home once but did not take him. His mother was never charged. Raymon believes she died of brain cancer, though one record gave her cause of death as "sickle cell complications."

John Raymon at age 12, when he first met the Finneys.

Raymon is not ashamed and has shared his story with a few teammates and coaches.

"He's lived so much of life already at age 21," said his foster father, Jack Finney. "It's John's story to tell."

***

Before his mother died, before the state's department of human services launched an investigation into why bruises covered his arms, he once asked her the question.

Why do you beat me so much?

"She said, 'John, it's cause I love you,' " Raymon said. "I was told that. That's insane."

Using the extension cord of a vacuum, she whipped him with the plug. She forced him to sleep standing up beside her bed, sometimes as long as 12 hours, and beat his back with a belt if his knees buckled.

"She used all types of tools," Raymon said, "like a torturing room."

He remembers the rings she wore when she grabbed his shirt, pulled him toward her and punched him twice in the mouth. Blood dripped out of his mouth like a faucet that night in the shower, he said, and he lost some of his teeth.

He slept in the backyard on garbage bags, sometimes in the pouring rain.

"There wasn't anything else to sleep on," Raymon said. "She gave me a few shirts to wear. No blankets."

And if he went back inside?

"She would've hit me in my mouth and knocked me out," he said. "She was so much stronger than me when I was little. There was nothing I could do."

One time Raymon ran away from home -- he often did -- he was plucked off the streets and taken to a hospital, where he said a pediatric evaluation determined he was malnourished. An apple pie from McDonald's sometimes was his only meal.

Three relatives of the birth mother contacted by the Post-Standard/syracuse.com denied knowledge of the extent of the abuse. Raymon's uncle characterized the mother's actions as "strict discipline" and part of their native Venezuela's "culture."

The Post-Standard/syracuse.com is not publishing the names of Raymon's mother and relatives at the request of the foster family.

***

On her way to work, Trish Finney watched boys step off a school bus and walk toward a housing complex. There were no adults to greet them and ask about their day.

It was a residential treatment facility in suburban Philadelphia named Bethanna.

"Kids would literally take their (feces) and throw it in your face," Raymon said. "Like little kids, they're about 6 years old, they curse up there, they'll piss on you. Just no respect for you whatsoever. They'd beat you with a scooter. It didn't make any sense. You'd see blood on the walls, kids fighting. Sometimes you had to let them fight because if you tried to break it up, they'd fight you.

"To a normal person you'd think it was an insane asylum."

There were about 10 homes at Bethanna, each one occupied by age groups as young as preschool through age 18, when, if you don't find a home, you are cast out onto the street. It's called aging out of the system.

Chris Nichols, a clinical director at Bethanna, declined to comment for this story, citing privacy laws. Bethanna closed its residential treatment facility in 2009 as part of a statewide shift from residential treatment to less restrictive environments for treatment of at-risk children and teenagers.

Raymon spent almost two years at Bethanna. It is impossible to say how much longer he would have lived there if Trish's curious mind did not lead her to its doors.

She decided she wanted to volunteer, and within three weeks of meeting Raymon -- taking him to the movies or his doctor's appointments as his resource aide -- Trish wanted to bring him home. She wanted to take him out of Bethanna's cinderblock walls with plexiglass windows and into her huge brick house with a luscious green lawn and basketball hoop at the top of the incline of the long driveway outside the city.

She met him in October of 2004, and Raymon moved in with the Finneys eight months later on his 13th birthday.

They noticed on his birth certificate that his last name was Raymon. All his life he thought he was John Raymond.

In the beginning, eating a meal at the kitchen table was so overwhelming, Raymon stared at the floor. He hoarded food in his room out of habit, not knowing if he again would be moving to a new home in a matter of weeks.

John Raymon with his foster parents, Jack and Trish Finney, after a high school football game.

As Raymon's body grew, he continued to misbehave. When Raymon was younger, he said he stole "anything I wanted." He remembers taking $20 his mom left for a babysitter. He took drinks and food from convenience shops. He got into fights, including once during football practice in 10th grade. He threw Snapple bottles and soda cans at passing cars, once shattering the car's window and another time hitting an undercover police vehicle. John spent his early teenage years on probation, doing community service and one summer going to boot camp.

Raymon underwent trauma therapy to try reach the root of his anger issues. Jack took notes during the hour-long sessions as memories trickled out. Eventually, the family stopped the therapy because a modern theory is that reliving the memories causes additional pain to the patient.

"(Raymon) would stop and pause," Trish said, "and then start crying and say 'I don't understand why someone would do that to a child.' "

He was diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

Trish viewed rescuing Raymon as a "social responsibility."

"Your heart just goes out to somebody who feels all doors are shut on them at such a young age," Jack said. "He was a likeable guy, but back then he didn't know how to trust anybody."

***

Raymon finally had a stable home -- and a family -- and now he was headed to Iowa to play football. After just a few months, in October of 2011, he left due to depression and because he did not have the proper support system in place.

Two months later, he got a call from his high school girlfriend saying she was eight months pregnant. Their son, Jayden, was born Dec. 26.

John Raymon at his son, Jayden's, baptism.

The weight of his uncertain college future was already suffocating him, and now he had a son. He argued with Jack about taking more responsibility, and Raymon walked out of the house and spent most of the next month living in an inner-city respite care home with a few younger boys.

Raymon thought he could be a positive influence, inspire hope that they didn't need to steal to survive. He realized he still had little to show for his own life. He needed to care for his son by going back to school for a degree, and football would provide the avenue.

Trish emailed nearby schools and those who showed interest in Raymon when he was being recruited out of high school, including Doug Marrone and Syracuse.

... I feel that John Raymon deserves a second chance.

... He has faced extreme adversity in his past and makes the movie Blindside look like a cake walk.

... I am hoping that because you were voted one of the Friendliest coaches by ESPN that you will at least answer this email.

She hit send at 5:16 p.m. on May 23, 2012, and waited.

***

Marrone called defensive line coach Tim Daoust and defensive coordinator Scott Shafer into a meeting to talk about adding Raymon to the roster.

"OK, he's gonna be yours. Do you wanna coach him or not?" Marrone asked the coaches. Raymon and the Finneys visited campus and spoke candidly about his history, gaining assurances he would not be treated differently than anyone else.

Roughly six weeks after Trish sent the email, Raymon enrolled at Syracuse.

"You couldn't help but say, 'Holy smokes, I gotta help this kid out,' " Daoust said. "And I think I can. He is a good kid who had a bad experience at (Iowa), but we're gonna get him right here."

Marrone's wife, Helen, a former assistant district attorney, prosecuted child abuse cases in Nashville. Marrone could look Trish in the eye and say, "I get it."

"John had some challenges, and I love John Raymon," said Marrone, now with the Buffalo Bills. "He was a great kid."

"I'm disappointed," Marrone added, "that we as a society can't get a better message out for those kids that there is hope through education, whether it's through football, whether it's through academics. There's a way to get out. There's a way to change your situation."

Raymon never got a chance to play for Marrone. The school asked the NCAA for a waiver that would have allowed Raymon to be eligible last fall instead of sitting out one year, per usual for most transfers. The Finneys prepared a "huge document" they thought was a "slam dunk." Pages and pages of notes detailing Raymon's childhood abuse, medical history and experiences at Iowa were turned over to Syracuse, which prepared the waiver.

The NCAA denied the request, and Raymon watched from the sidelines. The NCAA referred questions to the school, and Syracuse said it could not provide details, citing privacy law.

"It was very frustrating," Jack said, declining to go into more detail.

"We want people to understand mental health issues. That they're real," Trish said. "It blew us away they didn't do anything."

"When (the NCAA) comes out with an opinion, we're in compliance," Marrone said, "and that's the best way to say it."

***

Daoust is the type of coach who will bring over medicine when Raymon is sick or drive him to the airport at 5 a.m. to catch a flight home to attend a wedding. Both men are diabetic, so Daoust understands the constant battle to keep weight under control. He understands the lapses in focus during defensive line meetings, and he understands the mood swings the disease causes.

He also knows John Raymon the football player, the one Jack describes as "a loveable teddy bear, but you put him in a competitive situation and he can take your head off."

John Raymon (97) is expected to be a key reserve on the defensive line after sitting out last season because of NCAA transfer rules.

"I will coach for a long time and I won't see many John Raymons athletically," Daoust said in his office. "So if I can get Raymon to just win day by day, the depth chart will take care of itself. John Raymon, sitting here today, I expect to have a huge impact in every football game we play. Whether it's starting, end or tackle, I don't care, and he knows I don't care."

Raymon stands 6-foot-5 and weighs around 315 pounds.

He no longer looks at the ground when he's around strangers. He is not shy and overwhelmed.

He knows what he would say to his mother after all these years. He would look directly at her, his chocolate eyes locking with hers, unflinching as he towers above.

And her? She would see the future she almost denied him, as big as the man himself, the story continuing.

Follow Nate Mink on Twitter @MinkNate or email him at nmink@syracuse.com.