This 5-year old boy was starved and forced to live in a cupboard under the stairs.

Warning: This post contains disturbing images and accounts of child abuse and may be very distressing for some readers.

The images of this boy are so shocking they stay in your mind for hours after you see them.

They will make you want to reach out immediately to your own children and touch them, hold them, cradle them.

Every time you close your eyes you will see these bones, these scars, this frail innocent boy. And it will be hard not to feel shame and horror – anger and hatred at how this can happen.

But it did happen. And the photos are an important part of understanding just how bad it was for this five-year-old boy.

Police in the US released the images after arresting the boy’s father and step-mother.

The five-year-old was kept locked in a cupboard under the stairs in a house in Texas for two-and-a-half years.

He was wearing a soiled nappy and had scars and cuts on his back.

Police were alerted to the boy after they were called to the home to break up a fight on the front lawn. The boy’s 16-year old brother and 24-year old father, Bradley Bleimeyer, were fighting allegedly over the treatment of the five-year old.

When police arrived the 16-year old told them of his brother who was kept locked under the stairs.

The abused boy’s stepmother Tammi Bleimeyer, 33, had fled the home with the boy before officers arrived, according to click2houston.

Tammi Bleimeyer, who is six months’ pregnant – and has five other children — refused to return to the home when contacted by police.

A search found her with the five-year-old in a nearby hotel.

Child Protective Services spokeswoman Estella Olguin told The Chronicle that the family was first investigated earlier this year but authorities were told they had fled the state so they dropped the case.

They say that their officials last saw the little boy child on February 20.

‘He was not in this state of malnourishment,’ Ms Olguin said to The Chronicle.

‘Now we know they never moved… We still had more investigating to do on that case.’

The images of the boy were taken by police when he was rushed to hospital.

“He was severely under nourished, bone sticking out, bumps, bruises. His skin was coming off on his back. It’s a horrific horrific situation,” Assistant Chief Mark Herman said, adding he had never seen anything like it in 28-year career.

His biological mother had not seen him at all during the time he was living with his father and had been fighting for his custody.

They have now been reunited.

Tammi Bleimeyer was charged with endangering a child and released on a $2,000 bond.

Her husband, Bradley Bleimeyer, who was already out on bond for a burglary charge, was also charged with endangering a child, he is being held without bond.