He was nobody's child, a teenage boy who somehow ended up in the homes of people who allegedly beat, chained, burned and imprisoned him until he fled to safety this week.

Horrific details about the recent life of a 16-year-old known in court records only as John K. Doe emerged in court Thursday and in records obtained by The Bee.

For years, according to these sources, the youth, who originally was reported to be 17, was tortured at the hands of three people whose ties to him remain unclear. A criminal complaint filed Thursday in San Joaquin District Court says the teen was sadistically abused with a knife, a baseball bat and a belt while living with Michael Luther Schumacher and his wife, Kelly Layne Lau, and from whose Tracy home he escaped Monday. Before he ended up in their care, according to records, he was ritualistically abused by another woman, Caren Ramirez, in Citrus Heights.

While at Ramirez's home, he was beaten with martial arts sticks, a broomstick and a clothes hanger, according to police reports.

"This is horrendous," San Joaquin County Deputy District Attorney Angela Hayes said of the case. "It's tragic."

A criminal complaint issued Thursday accuses Schumacher, Lau and Ramirez of torture, false imprisonment and a variety of other crimes that could send them to prison for life.

Authorities still are sorting out the teen's relationship with Ramirez and how he ended up with Lau and Schumacher, but said that the three adults knew one another.

Sacramento County probation and court documents dating from May 2006 refer to Ramirez as the shackled teen's mother and his stepmother. Tracy authorities initially identified her as his aunt. But on Thursday, Tracy police spokesman Matt Robinson said Ramirez is no blood relation.

Schumacher and Lau appeared in a San Joaquin County courtroom packed with news media representatives and spectators on Thursday to hear the charges against them. Unshackled and wearing matching red suits issued by the jail, they sat just a few feet from each other, hands clasped in front of them and surrounded by a small army of sheriff's deputies. At the end of the proceeding, Lau began to sob.

The teen is in the care of Sacramento County Child Protective Services.

He had been missing since leaving a Sacramento group home more than a year ago and was emaciated, bruised, smelled of urine and feces, and had a chain padlocked to his ankle when he burst into a Tracy health club Monday afternoon and begged for help. Four other children, ages 1 to 8, have been taken from the Schumacher home and placed in protective custody. Authorities said those children had been neglected.

The teen's escape apparently marked the end of a saga of abuse.

Authorities said the teen was placed in a Sacramento group home several years ago after his father allegedly abused him, but he ran away. Sacramento County Child Protective Services then awarded custody of the teen to Ramirez.

Sacramento County sheriff's deputies were dispatched to Ramirez's home in September 2005 and again in May 2006 after calls indicated a child was being assaulted.

In the first report, the teen's stepbrother, then 16, told police Ramirez had hit him five times in the head and the chest with a martial arts stick. She punished him, he said, because he had returned home with only $9 when Ramirez sent him out to panhandle, and because she accused him of telling others she wasn't his real mother. Ramirez denied hitting the teen and said he hurt himself while wrestling with a friend.

Court documents show Ramirez was arrested and charged with a misdemeanor child abuse count in March 2006, but the court case, for whatever reason, failed to move forward.

Two months later, in May 2006, police returned to the Citrus Heights home after Ramirez's then 21-year-old daughter, Christina Sanchez, called to report child abuse. This time, it was the teen, then 13, who was the victim. A Sheriff's Department report refers to the teen as Ramirez's son.

The teen showed officers severe bruises all over his body and a swollen lip. He told deputies Ramirez used martial arts sticks to spank him. She had also hit him in the past with a broomstick, spatula and clothes hanger, he said.

Call The Bee's Cynthia Hubert, (916) 321-1082. Bee staff writer Andy Furillo contributed to this report.