A husband and wife in Canada allegedly held a homeless man with mental disabilities captive as a “slave-type maid” for decades, according to the victim’s son, whom prosecutors say the couple claimed and raised as their own.

The extraordinary decades-long saga involving accusations of routine beatings, stolen government checks and fraudulent hospital records was detailed Saturday in an extensive piece based on weeks of court testimony and interviews with six relatives by The Toronto Star. The alleged captors, Gary Willett Sr., and his wife, Maria, face similar charges in the case, but are not being tried together in the case that started in the late 1980s.

Willett Sr., 50, has pleaded not guilty to charges of forcible confinement, assault, theft over $5,000 and abduction of a child under the age of 14. Maria Willett is facing similar charges, but is currently being examined by a court-appointed specialist to determine if she’s fit to stand trial, her attorney told the Star.

While testifying in a Toronto courtroom last month, Willett said he and his wife only tried to help Tim Goldrick after finding the homeless man hunting for food in garbage bins behind their apartment building in downtown Toronto, where he worked as the building’s superintendent.

After offering him food, the Willetts then found Goldrick and his partner, Barbara Bennett, a basement apartment inside their building. Bennett would later become pregnant with Goldrick’s child and gave birth on Sept. 2, 1989, at Toronto East General Hospital, where Maria Willett provided her medical identification card to Bennett and told her to use it, she testified.

The Willetts later named the child Gary Willett Jr., according to the Star, with the boy’s birth certificate listing Gary Willett Sr. and his wife Maria Willett as his parents.

“I figured if I didn’t [use Maria’s card] I’d probably get hit,” Bennet testified. “At that time, I didn’t know if it was wrong or not.”

Both Goldrick and Bennett have unspecified intellectual disabilities and received monthly disability checks from Ontario’s Disability Support Program. Bennett told the Star was a “slow learner” in school and received special education programs throughout her childhood. Goldrick, meanwhile, has testified to having “intellectual issues” throughout his life, according to the Star.

In 1993, the story would take another unexpected twist when Bennett got pregnant again, this time by Willett Sr.’s brother, according to court records. Just a few months later, Bennett left the home with her daughter, Billie-Jean, in part because the Willetts were doing drugs around the girl, she testified.

“[Billie-Jean] was a baby and I didn’t want her around it,” Bennett testified.

After Bennett left the home, leaving her biological son behind, the Willetts moved to another residence in Etobicoke, where, according to a prosecutor, he was only allowed to leave the home to complete tasks and was forced to fork over the roughly $9,000 monthly assistance to the Willetts.

Goldrick was also routinely beaten and ate dog food “quite a few times” since he wasn’t allowed in the refrigerator, he testified.

“Sometimes, while I was sleeping, Gary (Sr.) would come in and hit me for no reason, and I’d wake up and I wondered why he did this,” Goldrick testified. “But I never found out why.”

Goldrick would end up leaving the home in 2012 and a dentist found he had several missing teeth and infections, with more than 50 percent of his teeth’s roots exposed, a dentist testified.

Meanwhile, Gary Willets Jr., who knew Goldrick as Tim — a man treated as a “slave-type maid” during his years with the family, he testified – began hearing from relatives around that same time that Goldrick might actually be his biological father.

“[The Willetts] denied it, and handed me a baby book, and said I was theirs,” Willett Jr. testified.

A paternity test later confirmed that there’s a 90 percent chance that Goldrick is the father of Willets Jr., now 28, according to the Star.

“I think about why it happened, why is my life like this?” Willett Jr., who no longer speaks to Bennett, told the newspaper. “How is someone stolen as a child and everything is OK? Not once did my real mother go looking for me.”

Closing arguments in the case are scheduled for Nov. 10, according to the Washington Post. Willett Sr.’s attorney, Sam Goldstein, said Goldrick and Bennett were free to leave his home any time they wanted and that his client used their monthly disability checks for rent and food. Willet Sr. said he and his wife adopted Gary Willett Jr. in a consensual decision with his parents, Goldstein told the Washington Post.