Investigators said they found him in urine-soaked pyjamas, pale and malnourished, and desperate to go to school.

A 10-year-old boy in London, Ont., was freed Thursday from the filthy bedroom he was forced to live in for up to two years, London Police Insp. Kevin Heslop told reporters Friday.

The child’s guardians, his aunt and uncle, have been arrested and charged with failing to provide the necessaries of life and forcible confinement. His nine-year-old female cousin was also removed from the home, and both are now in foster care.

The boy, who has not been identified by police, was “living in filthy conditions,” Heslop said, for an estimated 18 to 24 months.

He survived on a diet of fast food, delivered once in the morning and once at night. Although the bedroom had an ensuite bathroom, Heslop said the boy slept on a urine-soaked mattress, surrounded by feces and fast-food containers, and may have only left the room once, for a brief period, in 2013.

“It’s a horrific case and everyone sees it as that,” Heslop said. “Of course this is upsetting to (investigators); it would be upsetting to anyone.”

Jane Fitzgerald, executive director of the Children’s Aid Society for London and Middlesex, said it is thanks to an anonymous tip that they were able to save the boy.

“There are too few situations in the field of child welfare where we can say we are overcome with joy,” she said. “This week, our community came together in the service of a child, and he and another child are now safe.”

Heslop said the nine-year-old girl they also apprehended doesn’t appear to have been involved, and they’re not yet certain how aware she was of what was happening.

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Neighbour Daniel Wlodarczyk said he remembers that little girl, tapping on the glass in the dark past midnight, and in the afternoon on a school day. He said she’d peer out at him with a long face.

“I was like, ‘man, something’s not right,’” he said. “She just knocked so we would see her.”

The 21-year-old rarely saw the couple that owned the house next door, and the overgrown front lawn and messy yard had become a much-discussed eyesore in the neat subdivision east of London.

Neighbours on the quiet street say they sometimes thought the house was abandoned. Overgrown weeds shroud the legs of metal lawn furniture and haphazardly strewn decorative rocks, while an overturned basketball hoop lies next to a loose pile of bricks in the driveway.

“I used to just drive by and shake my head,” said Robert Bennett, who’s lived in the neighbourhood, called Summerside, since it was built about seven years ago.

Wlodarczyk said a man and woman of Asian ethnicity moved into the home about four years ago. That first summer, the couple had two children with them, a boy and a girl, but Wlodarczyk said they told his family the boy was visiting.

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“I never really saw them (after that),” he said, adding that the couple ran a convenience store nearby, but that it closed down about a year ago.

Taryn Marchegiano, who lives across the street, said she only saw the family once in a while, most recently last week. Like Wlodarczyk, she said she only ever saw a little girl, never a boy.

“It’s heartbreaking. You can’t put into words that this may be going on across the street from you and you didn’t see it,” she said. “It’s just so awful.”

Despite the living conditions, Children Aid’s Fitzgerald said the boy has already been treated and released from hospital. She said the long-term psychological ramifications of forcible confinement vary depending on the individual, but they’re hopeful about his future.

“He immediately wanted good food and has expressed a desire to go to school,” she told the Star. “Of course, we’ve got a long road to go.”

As for the boy’s cousin, Fitzgerald said she appears to be in good health. There is no evidence she was ever confined, and she was attending school.

“I think that’s really the conundrum,” Fitzgerald added. “That one child was being treated well and one was being treated so terribly.”

Heslop said the boy had been living with his aunt and uncle since he came to Canada in 2010. Heslop said police have not yet been in contact with the parents, who are not currently in the country, and do not know if they’re aware of what’s happened.

Police stressed the investigation is still in its infancy and officers aren’t ruling out the possibility of other forms of abuse. The motivations for the boy’s confinement remain unknown.

Children’s Aid had brief contact with the family in 2007 at another location involving a child that is related to one of the guardians, Fitzgerald said. The investigation was closed soon after, and that child is now an adult and living elsewhere.