Ohio ? A boy testified in court Thursday that his parents forced him to live in the bathroom as punishment for urinating in his bed. He said they forced him to stay in his “box” for up to two weeks for taking peanut butter, bread and cereal from the kitchen.

“I couldn’t come out of my room until I wrote the whole book of Deuteronomy,” the school-age boy said at the Juvenile Court custody hearing. “I was up there for like a month.”

The boy’s parents, Sharen and Michael Gravelle, also have been accused of making their special-needs adopted children sleep in cages.

The Gravelles are trying to regain custody of the 11 children, ages 1 to 15, who have problems such as fetal alcohol syndrome, HIV and a disorder in which children eat dirt. They were removed from the home in September, after a child-services investigator visited the home and examined the chicken-wire cages.