JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- Randall Piercy's 9-year-old son spent much of his life locked in a room. On Friday, Piercy learned he will have to do the same.

Last month, Piercy pleaded guilty to aggravated child abuse. On Friday, he was sentenced to spend nine years in prison for the crime.

Prosecutors said Piercy and his wife, Michelle, locked their son in his room, covered the window and shut him off from the rest of the world.

In 2006, Piercy was arrested after police said they found his youngest son locked in a bedroom that smelled of urine. Investigators said the boy was allowed out only once a day to go to the bathroom, didn't go to school, didn't get medical attention and wasn't allowed to have friends. Police said the father had video cameras in almost every room to monitor the boy's actions.

Piercy admitted on "Dr. Phil" that he taped the light switch in the boy's room so the child couldn't turn on the lights. Piercy said he did that because the boy had been burning things on the light bulb. He also admitted on the show to taping the boy's window shut.

In court on Friday, Judge Mallory Cooper gave Piercy the maximum sentence allowed under his plea agreement.

"I believe that for nine years you should eat alone, you'll have cameras on you, your lights will go on when the prison wants them to go on and your lights will go off when the prison wants them to go off," Cooper said.

She said that is exactly how Piercy's son lived.

Photos used as evidence in court showed the surveillance cameras that recorded the boy's every move, the window in the boy's bedroom covered up, the light switch taped up, even a 2-liter bottle that served as the child's bathroom and the remote prosecutors said Piercy used to control everything in the home.

"It's incredulous that he had to pee in a bottle," Cooper said.

Before Piercy was sentenced, witnesses testified before the judge about what the child went through in the man's home.

The key witness on Friday was Piercy's wife, who is also charged with mistreating the boy. On Friday, she told the judge that the child indeed lived as a prisoner.

She said the 9-year-old would wake up when a television turned on and at that point his father's voice would come over the intercom and he would be told to go downstairs and make himself breakfast and sit in a designated chair, where a camera could view the child eating breakfast. From there, Piercy's wife said the child would be told by intercom to return to his room.

Michelle Piercy told the judge that Randall Piercy decided when she could see their son.

"If he was good, if you know, if everything was fine, if Randy was in a good mood, I could see him," Michelle Piercy testified.

She said she would often leave notes for the boy, telling him she loved him and to be good for daddy. Sometimes, she said, it was her only way of communicating with the boy.

Michelle Piercy also said the 9-year-old stayed in his room upstairs while she was forced to live downstairs.

"I wasn't allowed to just go up the stairs and go to his room," she said.

Assistant state attorney Julie Schlax said Piercy ignored his son for years and as a result the boy will never reach his full potential.

"This is one of those cases where I truly don't understand why they did what they did," Schlax said.

The Piercy's son is in foster care.

Michelle Piercy's case is expected to go to trial in late December.

The Piercys are in the process of a divorce.