True Crime with Rachel Shannon
ABSOLUTELY WICKED: 10 Year old Boy was TORTURED & STARVED to Death by EVIL Step mother
Fri, 23 May 2025
10-year-old Gavin Peterson was an intelligent, happy boy who faced unimaginable hardships. Taken from his mother and placed in the care of his father and stepmother, Gavin endured abuse, neglect, and torture. Despite numerous reports, his father and stepmother escaped justice, which disturbed investigators and enraged an entire state. Go watch my other episodes on Spotify: The Disturbing Case of Stephanie ParzeShe Tried to Warn Them About her Son, Then he was MURDERED. THE CASE OF GUNNAR SCHUMACHER7 Year old’s Strange Death Reveals Mom’s DISGUSTING Secret: Did She Starve her for Attention?!Thank you guys for watching, hope to see you next time!
Chapter 1: What happened to Gavin Peterson?
And I just sat there and just thought about what he must have endured.
I never would imagine that Satan would let this happen.
I told them that I was like deathly terrified to go back with them.
It broke my heart to know that he died that way. I don't know how anyone could do that to anyone.
Today, we have yet another case that highlights the many failures in our child welfare system. A child who never had a chance from the very beginning. He was first failed by his parents, the first line of defense for a child. After that, he was continuously failed by the system despite numerous adults in his life trying to help him, trying to do what was best for him.
But no matter what anybody did to try and save poor Gavin's life, the red tape that is our government system prevented anyone from being able to actually help. And because of that, a 10-year-old boy suffered the worst kind of torture imaginable and
and he is now dead i want to use now as a warning that the details in today's case are horrendous they are gut-wrenching and heartbreaking and i know this is going to be a really tough one for a lot of you to hear so if you are extra sensitive to these types of cases this may not be the video for you but with that being said let's get into the case This is the horrendous story of Gavin Peterson.
Gavin Hansen Peterson was born January 15, 2012, to Melanie Peterson and Shane Peterson in Ogden, Utah, and he had two siblings, a then 21-year-old brother named Tyler and a 19-year-old sister, Miloni. Gavin was known as such a happy boy with a contagious smile and laugh. Gavin was intelligent, funny, and curious. He loved science and enjoyed learning all about the solar system.
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Chapter 2: How did Gavin's family dynamics contribute to the tragedy?
He was your typical preteen boy who loved Pokemon and the Nintendo Switch, and his favorite color was blue. He was kind to everyone around him, and despite everything he went to in his short life, he absolutely loved his family.
And let me say, hearing just how much he loved his family and wanted to spend time with them really makes his case that much more heartbreaking knowing what they did to him in return.
I don't have too many details surrounding the relationship between Melanie and Shane, but I do know that they were once married for quite a long time, and both of Gavin's older siblings were born to Shane and Melanie. At some point, when Gavin was pretty young, the pair split up and Shane got remarried to Nicole Scott.
It's known that Melanie had some issues with drug use, specifically with marijuana use, which some would say isn't that big of a deal. But it is illegal in Utah, so using it, especially around children, is going to get you in trouble. And me saying that is not making light of the situation I'm about to tell you about Melanie at all.
According to court documents, back in August of 2014, a police officer found a then two-year-old Gavin walking around alone outside the home unsupervised. The officer picked him up and eventually located his home and spoke with Melanie. Inside the home, the officer found a full marijuana pipe sitting on a shelf out in the open in the front room.
By November of 2014, she ended up pleading guilty to drug charges as well as charges of exposing a child to drugs. For this, Melanie was sentenced to 100 hours of community service and she owed a $600 fine. She was also ordered to complete a mental health evaluation and treatment, complete a parenting program,
At this time, Melanie also lost custody of all three children pending completion of her sentence. By February of 2015, she completed all of her community service hours and paid her fine. She then officially completed her mental health and drug abuse treatment in July of 2015. She also had a job and was able to maintain her employment.
she did everything she was told to do everything she did was to better herself for her own mental health and so that she could be the best mom she possibly could she took the treatments and classes seriously doing everything she could to get her children back despite this though she actually never was able to get custody back years passed before melanie was even able to see her children again
For those years, she had no idea of the conditions her children were being kept in. She didn't know that they were suffering under Shane and Nicole's care. I'm sure she hoped for the best, never thinking that a human being the father of her children could harm them. But that isn't what was actually happening.
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Chapter 3: What role did the child welfare system play in Gavin's case?
As a punishment, Nicole shaved her head. In addition to that, Miloni said that Nicole and Shane treated her like a maid. She would be forced to spend long hours outside doing yard work at their home as well as at their great-grandmother's house who lived across the street. There were days where she was put outside in the morning and forced to work all day without breaks until dinnertime.
Even with all of the physical labor she had to do though, she was only being given one to two meals per day. And it's not like they were full hearty meals at the end of the day either. She was given one or two slices of bread which were smothered in mustard because Nicole knew that Miloni hated mustard.
By March of 2019, Miloni said that a friend noticed her condition and reported her concerns to the school counselor who then brought in a worker from DCFS to do an interview. In that interview, at first, Miloni told her that she was fine because she was afraid of what Shane and Nicole would do to her if she told them what was really going on.
But eventually, she did open up about some things that she was experiencing in the home. She showed her some of the bruises she had and told her about some of the punishments she was receiving. At that time, a safety plan was created for Miloni. Apparently, it was decided that Nicole cannot be alone with Miloni.
Instead, she would go to her great-grandmother's house across the street until Shane got home. Then, she was allowed to go home. After this was set in place a few weeks after the case was closed, DCFS said there was nothing more they could do. As you could imagine, knowing that DCFS got involved and knowing that Maloney told the worker about Nicole... Nicole just got angrier and angrier.
By April, the abuse started to get worse, so she tried running away to her mother's house, but Nicole and Shane caught her at a gas station. They put her in the car, and according to Miloni, Nicole strangled her so badly that she thought she was going to die.
After that, she wasn't allowed to go to school for the last two weeks of school, probably because of the bruising this attack left on Miloni. Nicole also told her that she just didn't deserve to go to school. During those weeks, she was left outside pretty much all day, every day.
And as a side note, that is one thing that I want to talk about is that I feel like this is something that a lot of DCFS caseworkers just do not understand, is that when you confront the parents about accusations that their child has made,
if they are abusing them these accusations and meeting up with them and having to go through all of this is just going to make the parent matter and matter at that child it's most of the time going to cause the abuse to get worse knowing that the child is going out and ratting on them
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Chapter 4: How did school staff respond to signs of abuse?
Chapter 5: What were the living conditions for Gavin and Miloni?
There is no reason why a kid should be denied food while they're at school or some event that is taking place all day. Obviously, there are religious and cultural exceptions, but those are usually temporary and are for certain periods of time. There is no reason why kids should go multiple school years being denied food every single day.
Over the course of several months during that 2022-2023 school year, multiple staff members in that cafeteria tried helping. At first, when they called the Department of Child and Family Services to report their concerns, they were told that the principal needed to make the report. So, they reported their concerns to the principal who said they'd take care of it.
After that though, it didn't seem like anything was being done, so staff called DCFS directly multiple more times to report. The cafeteria worker I mentioned earlier, Jan, said that at first she didn't know what exactly to make of Gavin's situation. Was he a kid with an eating disorder and that's why he was eating out of the trash? Or was he starving?
She also wondered why he missed so much school. Was he really just sick all the time or were his parents keeping him home? She felt that school was a safe haven for Gavin, so when he missed, she was really concerned. She wondered why school administrators weren't following up more with these absences, seeing how frequent they were.
But, as I said, over time, the more she got to know Gavin, she was really concerned that he truly was being starved, and she knew he was suffering. But despite her best efforts, nothing was being done about it. In fact, she was prevented from helping. By August of 2023, Nicole ended up pulling Gavin out of school completely to homeschool him.
This was just such a tragedy for Gavin who loved school and felt safe there. At school, he had other people watching him. In my opinion none of these people did even close to enough but he at least had other adults keeping an eye on him. He got to eat food given to him by other students and staff. He was free from abuse while at school.
He got time to socialize with other kids and learn all about the subjects he loved. But now, he was pulled out and spent all of his time at home. No escape from everything he was going through. After Gavin was pulled from school, no one saw him or heard anything about him for almost a year. There were no updates to his case.
It didn't seem like anyone bothered to check on him after being pulled from school. None of the DCFS reports were followed up on. Even the staff at school, they all wondered what happened, but no one was giving them answers. Jan, the cafeteria worker, said that she really hoped that maybe he stopped attending that school because he was pulled from the home with Nicole and Shane. She was hopeful.
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Chapter 6: What were the final events leading to Gavin's death?
She wasn't getting any answers and she wanted to know what happened, but she wasn't getting those answers. So she was just hoping for the best. But unfortunately, that was not the case. Nothing happened in this case until July 9th, 2024, when officers were called to the home of Nicole Scott and Shane Peterson with reports of an unresponsive child.
According to first responders, when they arrived to the home, they found Gavin lying on the bathroom floor unconscious. They were told by Shane and Nicole that Gavin had been sick for several days. He was vomiting repeatedly and now was not breathing. He was then rushed to the hospital, but it was too late. He was pronounced dead at that hospital.
Immediately upon examining 10-year-old Gavin, it was clear that he was extremely malnourished and underweight. According to examination by doctors, it appeared that he was malnourished to the point that his internal organs shut down completely. At this point, it's too early to know an exact cause of death. However, I think it's pretty clear what happened.
This poor, sweet 10-year-old little boy was starved to death. After finding Gavin's body, of course, an investigation into his death began. As you could imagine, they found that Gavin was being forced to live under horrific conditions. They found that he was locked in a room all by himself while being monitored on surveillance cameras.
Upon looking into those cameras, investigators found footage of Gavin in his room curling up on the cold hard floor without any blankets or bedding or anything he also was not wearing any clothes just a diaper which was soiled for long periods of time and was not being changed he wasn't allowed to move wasn't allowed to eat wasn't allowed to use the restroom.
When he was given food, he got the same thing that Maloney described earlier, a piece of bread covered in mustard because he didn't like mustard. He was only allowed to drink a third of a cup of water per day. They also uncovered various text messages between family members which also proved the allegations of abuse and neglect.
Of course, investigators also spoke with various people, all who knew Gavin, Nicole, and Shane. They spoke with Miloni, who opened up about all of the abuse she faced at the hands of her father and stepmother. She said that once she finally left the home and stayed with her mother, she was terrified of what would happen to Gavin.
She said that while living there, she was experiencing the brunt of the abuse. They weren't treating Gavin nearly as harshly as they treated her. But once she left, she knew that they would turn their violence towards him. Now, up to this point, I haven't made too much mention of Miloni and Gavin's older brother, Tyler.
He was an adult by this point, but still living with Gavin and the rest of the family. You'd think that maybe he would have a similar story to tell as Miloni, but that isn't the case at all. According to Miloni, when the two were younger, they were basically best friends. But after the abuse started, that all changed. Tyler was allowed to do pretty much whatever he wanted.
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Chapter 7: How did the community react to Gavin's story?
So to me, it seems like Nicole was pissed that Shane had three other kids with another woman and wanted to make them suffer as much as possible because they were an extension of Melanie. That's just what I think at this point based on the limited information we have.
Of course, investigators have spoken to school staff, Melanie, and everyone else who saw Gavin during the course of the abuse who were all concerned for literal nothingness. years before this happened.
It broke my heart to know that he died that way.
I don't know how anyone could do that to anyone. With support from her brother, Melanie Peterson is speaking out for the first time, heartbroken over the death of her youngest child, 12-year-old Gavin Peterson. Gavin was under the legal custody of his father, Shane Peterson. He lived with Shane, stepmother Nicole Scott, and oldest brother Tyler. The last time I saw him, I took a picture of him.
because he looked so skinny. Melanie was last allowed to see Gavin four years ago when Gavin's father and stepmother found out that she was taking pictures to show the Utah Division of Child and Family Services.
Melanie says they blocked her from ever seeing Gavin again by making a false complaint that would end her visitation rights until a judgment was made, a process that dragged out due to COVID.
It's not that I didn't try.
No one helped me. I never would imagine that Shane would let this happen to starve him and let him die.
After the discovery of Gavin's body, investigators had a pretty clear picture of the abuse he suffered. He was being abused and neglected over the course of two long grueling years, if not longer. Finally, after suffering so, so very much, his body couldn't handle it. And as a result of his mistreatment, Gavin lost his life.
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