These horrifying pictures show the fate of a young Chinese boy forced to spend his days locked in a small wooden cage.
Wei Yun, now 23, was unable to stand, walk or talk as a child, and could only crawl. At the age of two he was crawling around the family home in southern China's Guangxi Province, when he knocked over a boiling pot of water.
After sustaining near-fatal injuries, Wei's parents began locking him in a wooden cage for his own safety, Quirky China reported.
Wei's father works away from home and rarely has the time to visit, meaning there is no one to watch over Wei while his stepmother Nong is out working during the day.
Because of these circumstances, she locks him away in the small cage all day while she is out.
A neighbour commented: "It's a hard choice for her as she on one hand has to take care of Wei Yun but on the other she has to do field work and other odd jobs to support the family".
The case has echoes of the desperate measures taken by other poverty-stricken parents in the country, including the case of a taxi driver who resorted to chaining his toddler to a lamppost while he worked.
The two-year-old boy was pictured tethered to the pole while his father scraped a living ferrying passengers and his mother worked nearby collecting rubbish.
The boy's father , Chen Chuanlin, later claimed the move was necessary because his elder daughter had been kidnapped, the New York Daily Times reported.