Man accused of holding teen captive for more than a year denied bond

GWINNETT COUNTY, Ga. — A man accused of holding a teen captive in his home for an entire year faced a judge for the first time Monday.

Michael Wysolovski was denied bond after he was arrested and charged for allegedly holding a North Carolina teen captive in his Duluth home.

The now-17-year-old disappeared from her parents’ home in Charlotte in May of last year. Investigators said the teen met Wysolovski online and somehow ended up in his control.

Channel 2’s Tyisha Fernandes was in the courtroom for Wysolovski first court appearance Monday.

She said three women and one man were there in support of the suspect but they wouldn't say if they were relatives.

They didn't get a chance to speak to Wysolovski, but he acknowledged them and whispered something to them that Fernandes said she could not make out.

As they left the hearing, Fernandes asked them to speak on Wysolovski's behalf. All they would say to Fernandes was "no comment."

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Wysolovski has been charged with aggravated sodomy, cruelty to children deprivation in the 1st degree, interference with custody and false imprisonment after police said he held the girl captive in his Duluth home along Seneca Trail for more than a year.

Saturday, the FBI raided Wysolovski's home, finding the teen inside.

Police haven't said exactly how the girl ended up at Wysolovski’s home, but they did say that she disappeared from her parents’ home in North Carolina in May of last year after meeting Wysolovski online.

Her parents said the teen has a form of autism and they weren't sure they would ever see her again.

"There are changes in my daughter. She is not the same person that left and that is the hardest part of this," mother Shaunna Burns told Channel 2's sister-station in Charlotte, WSOC-TV.

They said the girl has lost 15-20 pounds since they last saw her.

Her parents can’t share all of the details of her ordeal because of the ongoing investigation, but they believe she was lured away by an older man she met online.

“This is our child, our baby,” Shaunna Burns said. “We would, we would never hurt her and the idea that someone did is really, really hard.”

On Saturday, police said the teen reached out to a woman in Romania online and told her she was being held against her will.

Police said she sent the woman pictures of the home and five hours later, FBI agents found the teen. Now, she's home safe with her parents in Charlotte.

“I got a message that said, ‘I’ve been in communication with your daughter and she’s alive and she wants to come home,’ and from there it has been like an avalanche,” Shaunna Burns said.

The teen's parents call her rescue a miracle and said it should give hope to others with missing loved ones.

“Families need to know don’t give up no matter how much time passes,” her father, Anthony Burns, said. “There is hope that you just have to keep believing that the one lead will come.”

Cox Media Group