(This story was edited at 3 p.m. Wednesday to list Angela Hudson’s current name.)

A former foster mother struggled to contain her tears Tuesday afternoon as she told a jury that an Altoona boy who was under her care in 2015 revealed that he had been physically and sexually abused when he was 5 years old.

Angela Hudson of Bedford County said the boy’s mother was dead, his father was in prison and his grandmother, with whom he and a sister had lived, lost custody of the children because of an alcohol problem.

The youth, then 12, had often visited because he was friends with Hudson’s son, Tyler, so child welfare placed him with the family and he was there for about two years.

“I considered him my son,” she said.

“He had a hard life. … He just wanted people to love him, and he started calling me ‘Mom,'” she said

“I really didn’t have problems with him,” Hudson told a Blair County jury hearing testimony in the trial of Jessica Dawn Hewitt, 34, who faces multiple charges of child abuse, including involuntary deviate sexual intercourse and related offenses.

Hudson was called to testify by Assistant District Attorney Deanne Paul because she initially reported the suspected abuse to Bedford County Children & Youth Services after her son told her that the boy hinted to him that something might have occurred when he lived in Altoona.

Without telling her son, she contacted Bedford child welfare, and an investigation began.

But more details of the abuse came out later as she and the youngster were feeding the ducks on the farm.

“He started crying, and (the abuse) just came out,” said Hudson, as she became emotional.

As the boy began remembering events of his past, she said, he would wake up at night “screaming.”

She said she would hold his head and just let him talk.

By Oct. 27, 2015, an appointment had been arranged for him to travel to Bellefonte for an interview at the Centre County Child Advocacy Center, where he talked to Kimberly Saltzman, a child specialist forensic interviewer, who told the jury Tuesday that, over the past four years, she has conducted more than 850 interviews.

She explained that her job was to ferret out the facts of a possible child abuse case by asking open-ended questions.

Her interview with the youngster lasted 102 minutes, during which time he revealed that Hewitt was physically as well as sexually abusive.

His father, before going to prison, was working away from home during the week, leaving the boy, his sister and a stepbrother in Hewitt’s care.

She punished the boy by frequently beating him with a belt, he told the interviewer.

She would place him and his sister, ages 5 and 3 at the time, in the darkened basement for lengthy periods of time.

He related that she also would enter his bedroom and sexually abuse him, fondling him and using sex toys on him.

His statements with child advocate’s interviewer mirrored the story that he told the jury on Monday.

The defense, led by Altoona attorney Steven P. Passarello, hit hard at discrepancies concerning the boy’s recitation of the details of the alleged assaults.

For instance, the boy said Hewitt had locked him and his sister in the cellar, but the boy’s father, Passarello contended in a past statement, related that the cellar door had no lock.

Passarello questioned the story that the boy allegedly told to Tyler and Angela Hudson, in which he said the abuse occurred every day.

The defense also contends that the boy has a motive for making up a story — that his father, now out of prison — is fighting for custody of his children. On the stand Tuesday, the father answered, “I guess,” when Passarello asked him if his custody battle would benefit from Hewitt being found guilty of child abuse.

Passarello noted that the custody case is coming before a judge in September.

“Yeah, I didn’t set that date,” answered the father.

Passarello also pointed out that Hewitt was pregnant with their child during at least a portion of the time period in which the abuse allegedly occurred.

The prosecution called one other witness Tuesday: the former commander of the city’s narcotics and vice unit, Troy Johannides, who arrested the boy’s father during a drug raid at the boy’s home in 2008.

Johannides and other officers were searching for narcotics, which they found, but during the search, officers also discovered a box of sex toys, which had nothing to do with their investigation, but, according to Paul, was relevant to the case before the jury.