A Seymour man is accused of abusing and torturing his wife. The victim finally got the courage to call police during one of his tirades. Kenneth Eugene Harden, 32, of Seymour, is being held on a $100,000 bond in Jackson County.
Harden is accused of 38 counts of rape, battery and criminal confinement against his wife who told officers she would scream and yell for help hoping a neighbor would call police.
“We could hear them fighting sometimes and we heard a lot of loud noises upstairs, but I never thought anything of it,” Tyler Davers said, who lives below the apartment where the alleged abuse occurred.
Davers noticed something else was odd about the woman who lived above him – she always wore a leather collar.
“It was just a black strap and you could see where the chain could go into it. She wore it at the bus stop. She wore it everywhere she went,” Davers said.
The collar was all part of a sex slave contract prosecutors said Harden enforced every day.
She told police she met him online last year through Craigslist. He said he was a Godly man and they both talked about how much the Bible meant to them.
They soon married. A few months later, she said Harden revealed he’s a sadist.
What started out as experimentation in the bedroom escalated into abuse.
Not only would he lead her around with a collar on – prosecutors said he would force her head and hands into a wooden box after her child went to school.
She told police there were also times he would duct tape or tie her up all day.
Charging documents go on to detail graphic sexual and physical abuse – all while she hoped and prayed someone would hear her through the apartment walls.
“We heard the banging around and stuff up there, I didn’t even expect that. That’s pretty bizarre,” Davers said.
Police initially arrested Harden on strangulation and domestic battery charges related to an incident at the apartment.
The Jackson County Prosecutor’s Office filed additional charges Wednesday after further reviewing the case.
