(SHE) STOOD BY IDLY WHEN SHE CLEARLY SHOULD HAVE DONE SOMETHING.

Doctors and veteran police officers say it was worst case of child abuse they have ever seen.

By the time the boy escaped from his dungeon of a basement in the family’s Kanata home in February 2013, he weighed only 50 pounds, was severely dehydrated and “looked like a concentration camp survivor,” according to one police officer.

The boy’s father, a former Mountie, and stepmother cannot be named in order to protect the identity of the boy, who is now 14.

The Mountie’s wife, 38, was found guilty of failing to provide the necessities of life and assault with a weapon (a wooden spoon) last November.

Justice Maranger delivered a federal sentence of three years to the stepmother, but she is being credited for time served in jail. As a result, she will serve 17 more months behind bars.

The judge said he still didn’t know why the woman, with knowledge of what was going on in her basement, didn’t put a stop to the abuse.

Court heard she was a successful executive public servant in the federal government. She was also the biological mother to a newborn and a two-year-old boy at the time, and a model high school and university student. She came from a “good and hard-working family,” and had no prior criminal record.

“All of which made what she did or did not do the more difficult to understand,” the judge said Wednesday.

Although the boy testified she tried to intervene on more than one occasion, she was afraid of her husband, a former counterterrorism officer with the RCMP.

The boy’s father, 45, was convicted of assault, sexual assault, forcible confinement, and failing to provide the necessities of life. He will be sentenced at a later date.