A 15-year-old Utah boy rose to fame on TikTok after barricading himself and his sister in a bedroom at their mother’s house to defy a court order that wanted them to be reunited with their allegedly sexually abusive father.
Ty Larson and his sister Brynlee have been locked in their bedroom in their mother’s $830,000 Salt Lake City home for months to avoid moving back in with their father, Brent Joel Larson. In 2018, Larson was found to have sexually and emotionally abused them as young children by the Utah Department of Children and Family Services.
But Larson accused Ty and Brynlee’s mother, Jessica Zhart, of fabricating the allegations and training them in a process known as “parental alienation,” per PerPublica.
Although the American Psychiatric Association and many legal entities do not recognize parental alienation as legitimate, Judge Derek P. Pullan ruled in January that Zhart did indeed use it against the father of her children and ordered her to be reunited with him.
Ty has insisted the allegations are true and that he fears for his life from his father. In response, he barricaded himself and Brynlee in her room, and in addition to posting TikToks about the situation, he’s livestreamed 24/7 on Twitch for viewers to “guard” them.
Ty Larson, left, livestreams on TikTok from a barricaded bedroom. Police have been attempting to place him and his sister, Brynlee Larson, in the care of their father, who they say sexually abused them
On Jan. 10, Ty posted his first TikTok, sharing his father’s allegations of abuse against him and his sister, explaining that two days earlier the couple decided to barricade themselves in their room for their own safety.
“I need to be barricaded in my room, my own choice, to keep me safe because the court system isn’t trying to save us, nobody is trying to protect us,” he said in the video. “I’m the one who has to decide about my own safety. And that’s just to stop the police, nothing will stop them, that’s just a stall.”
“We’re horrified to go to school, we’re horrified to leave the house, we’re horrified to even leave this space,” he added. “I am afraid if I am sent I will be killed by my father because he has threatened me and my family so many times if I told anyone.”
Since then, the two have stayed in the room, with a wooden plank nailed to the door, while their mother provides them with food. Initially, they snuck out to use the bathroom, but have since cut into the bedroom closet wall so they can access the bathroom without entering a common area of the house.
In his order to remove Ty and Brynlee from the home, Judge Pullman accused Zhart of perpetuating the situation by continuing to “wash the children’s clothes and bring food to the barricaded room.”
“Children work under the false assumption that they are in the driver’s seat and have the freedom to choose when, where and under what conditions parental leave takes place,” he wrote. ‘You are not.’
Ty Larson, left, livestreams on TikTok from a barricaded bedroom. Police have been attempting to place him and his sister, Brynlee Larson, in the care of their father, who they say sexually abused them
Ty and Brynlee Larson. Both claim their father sexually abused them when they were young children
Zhart and Larson separated in 2012 but maintained a friendly relationship with their children.
But when he was 11 in 2018, Zhart took Ty to a pediatrician to treat panic attacks and severe anxiety, according to records verified by ProPublica.
There, Ty said his father had sexually abused him since he was four years old and claimed that his father held his head under water in a bathtub and sprayed water into his anus. Ty said his father did similar things during his childhood and even sometimes came into his room and petted him while he thought Ty had fallen asleep.
Ty also told investigators his father said “he would kill his mother and sister” if he told anyone about the abuse.
Brynlee, then seven, said her father also sexually abused her by penetrating her with his finger and fondling her, records obtained by ProPublica said.
That year, the Utah Division of Child and Family Services (DCFS) found the allegations “supported,” as did police, although Larson was never arrested.
Two other minors also accused Larson of molesting them, according to ProPublica, although DCFS considered the allegations “unsubstantiated.”
Ty with that mother, Jessica Zhart. She has denied all allegations of “parental alienation”.
Jessica Zhart said she needed to look up the term “parental alienation” after her husband accused her of it in 2018
Months after the allegations against Larson surfaced, he accused Zhart of sabotaging his relationship with his children through parental estrangement.
She told ProPublica the term was completely new to her at the time and she had to look it up to see what it meant.
“I literally had to rack my brains over what I was being accused of in the first place,” she said. “I saw them make that story up about me and it doesn’t matter what the truth really is.”
Larson’s attorney called the claims “false” and insisted they had changed constantly over the years.
“There have been similar false claims – over and over again for years. The stories keep changing and expanding each time — always about the same events,” attorney Ron Wilkinson told ProPublica.
“The children are abused by their mother. It’s heartbreaking,” he said. “One only hopes that the children can recover from the damage their mother has done to them.”
A reunion therapist who has worked with Ty and Brynlee, Michelle Jones, agreed, saying her claims were a “false narrative.” About the DCFS ruling, she told ProPublica it’s possible “sometimes they inadvertently present a reasoning.”
In 2019, forensic psychologist Monica D. Christy was brought in to investigate the case. She ruled that Larson “at the very least” behaved in “unusual and inappropriate” ways.
“Whether these were sexually motivated acts and constitute child sexual abuse is for the court to decide,” she said in her findings.
The $830,000 Utah home where Ty and Byrnlee barricaded themselves in their bedroom
Jessica Zhart and the father of her children separated in 2012 and initially had a friendly relationship
Judge Pullman ruled in favor of Larson’s parental alienation lawsuit, characterizing it as a “campaign” led by Zhart.
He called the allegations against Larson an “abuse narrative” and ordered the children to attend “reunion therapy.” He also handed custody of Ty and Brynlee over to their father, saying it was the “only way to get the kids to recover from this psychological battleground.”
But he also ruled that Larson could not have any unsupervised time with the children and that they would have to live with a relative until the situation was further clarified.
Ty said the claims his mother planted false narrative were “100 percent fake — and if you don’t see that, you’re blind as a bat.”
Many on the outside watching the case agree, and last week a group of about 50 people demonstrated against the verdict on the steps of Utah’s capital.
A court spokesman told ProPublica, “I know that Judge Pullan spent many, many hours going through evidence and testimony before reaching his verdict.”