When police opened a blue makeshift shed on a rural, property near Taree, they found a derelict scene.

There was a bed and mattress raised at a 45-degree angle, with soiled sheets on one side.

There was a small desk and paint tins in the corner.

There was a window, with no flyscreen, looking through to a dog kennel that shared the hovel of shipping containers with its other inhabitant –  an eight-year-old boy.

“I felt like an animal,” the boy would later scrawl on a piece of paper in his juvenile handwriting.

“I thought that I would be kept there forever.”

There was no ventilation, no food or water, and ant powder was scattered around the room – a box he was made to help build.

The child would be locked in there daily, denied sustenance and a place to go to the toilet.

He was bashed for urinating in the corner, or for defecating into a tin.

He was let out to do chores, and made to hold bricks in front of him for not completing them.

The other children on the Elands cannabis farm –  aged 10, three and 18 months –  were sometimes let in to see him, as was his mother.

For a while, the children had free access to the hydroponic set-up, helping cultivate the commercial-scale crop.

It was in the same room they watched TV.

The man responsible, now 30, was on April 27 imprisoned for a maximum of 6½ years, with a non-parole period of four years.

He pleaded guilty to the sophisticated cultivation, to which he exposed children, and to falsely imprisoning the boy, depriving him of necessities, and to repeatedly assaulting him.

The man, the partner of the boy’s mother, was the last of a group of people to be sentenced after police raided the operation on December 18, 2015.

The property looked as though it was under construction: a single-storey house surrounded by scattered shipping containers.

On the western side of the home was a black wooden deck with an outdoor spa on it, a facade concealing a pair of trapdoors to an underground bunker.

Inside was an operational hydroponic system: chemicals, ducting, fans, fluorescent lights, power cords and water supply to 225 cannabis plants in pots.

Police found a sawn-off rifle, batons and capsicum spray in the bunker, along with nunchaku, flick knives and swords in the house.

Amid sickening circumstances, the man conjured a joke for his discoverers: “Wish you could have come like two months later, at least I would have got some bud out of it.”

When the boy was freed from his 2.4m by two metre enclosure he was thin and filthy.

He had dirty dressings on his ankles, and weeping sores.

He had bruises, abrasions and scabs, calluses, a broken front tooth, and a small burn on his hand.

His bones lacked density, his muscles had no bulk.

As if to allay their disgust, the man told police: “I haven’t not been feeding him.”

The first container he was caged in was yellow and smaller than the blue one he was found in.

He was being separated for "inappropriately" touching another boy.

In the smaller container was a blanket but no bed, food, and limited water.

He was in there for close to a week.

The child developed sores on his feet from wearing shoes that were too big and being made to carry concrete blocks.

Instead of being taken to the doctor he was taken out of school so as not to arouse suspicion from authorities.

Records show the boy hadn’t attended school since October 30, 2015.

On November 10, police went to the property over concerns for him.

He showed officers the scratches on his arms and told them he’d fallen over.

They grew suspicious about what was going on, and applied for a search warrant. 

Concerned there would be more visits, the man and his overseer, who ran the farm through a regime of fear, moved the boy to the larger container. 

Perversely, the man said he regularly kicked and slapped the boy out of mercy, so the overseer wouldn’t belt the child harder.

He kicked the boy for taking the rubbish out, he hit him with a cane, slammed his head into the container, and punched him in the leg, leaving him unable to walk.

The other adults involved in the scheme claimed the overseer subjected them all to violence.

That man was eventually sentenced to six years and four months in prison, with a non-parole period of four years and five months, for cultivating the commercial crop to which he exposed children, false imprisonment, assault occasioning actual bodily harm, and numerous weapons convictions.

The child’s mother, who told police she didn’t agree with keeping him in the shed, received three years and eight months, with a non-parole period of two years and five months, for false imprisonment, failing to provide necessities for her son, and cultivating cannabis.

She will soon be eligible for parole.

Her brother was sentenced to two years and seven months, with a minimum period of just under two years.

Another woman, who was not at the property when it was raided, was jailed for two years and one month, with a minimum term of a year and five months for weapons and cultivating convictions. Her term has since expired.

When police swooped, the children were whisked into care.

The boy was medically examined a month later, his doctor noticing a “remarkably different” child.

He looked nourished, and had put on four kilograms.

But it was the brewing psychological damage that had clinicians worried.

“It was terrible being in the shipping container.

“I felt sad and lonely … I felt very scared.

“Now sometimes it’s like everything in my mind is dead,” he wrote almost two years after his release, in a victim impact statement to District Court judge Leonie Flannery.

She would use this statement in jailing the captor.

He would habitually use drugs such as ice on the property, and continued to abuse them in custody.

Judge Flannery said the man – also the victim of a traumatic upbringing – had gained little insight into the nightmare he’d created.

“The psychological and emotional harm [the boy] suffered was immeasurable,” she said.

Sydney Morning Herald