The woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was sentenced to prison at Chester Crown Court in North West England After a judge said the baby, who was discovered weeks before her third birthday, suffered a “living death” as a result of her mother’s “terrible secret”.
The girl, whose name was not mentioned, was found with tangled hair, a rash and some deformities in the family home in Cheshireaccording to the PA Media news agency, which published a report on the case.
The court was told that the woman, who admitted four counts of child cruelty last month, hid the baby from her partner, who regularly stayed at the family home, as well as from her other children.
PA Media reported that Judge Steven Everett said: “In my opinion, what you did completely defies belief… You have forbidden that The baby girl Little of any love, proper affection, proper attention, interaction with others, proper diet, or medical care is absolutely necessary.”
He added: “You tried to control this situation as carefully as you could, but by pure chance your terrible secret was discovered. The consequences for (the child) were disastrous – physically, psychologically and socially.”
Baby girl ‘slowly coming back to life’
He continued to tell the court that the child, who is now in foster care, is “a bright little girl who may be slowly coming back to life from what was a living death in that room.”
And he said Prosecutor Sion Father Mihangil said that when the child was taken to the hospital, it was found that she was suffering from malnutrition And severe drought. The court heard she was only fed cereals made from milk through a syringe.
She also had a cleft palate, which was left untreated.
“It was kept in a drawer,” Mihangil added Bedroomhas not been taken out, has not been socialized, and has not interacted with anyone else,” he said, explaining that her developmental age ranges between 0 and 10 months.
He went on to tell the court that the little girl was left alone when her mother went to work, took the other children to school and even when she went to stay with relatives over Christmas.
I discovered it by chance
According to what was stated in court, when the woman’s partner began to sleep in the same house, the woman moved the child to another room, where she was left alone.
But the partner eventually found the child when he came home one day to use the bathroom and heard a noise coming from one of the bedrooms. Family members were alerted, and later that day social services attended the property, where they found the girl in a stairwell.
The social worker told the court that when she confronted the mother, the latter “did not show any emotion and appeared indifferent.”
The social worker added: “It became so terrifying that I was probably the only other face she (the child) saw except her mother’s face.”
During an interview with police, the woman said she did not know she was pregnant and was “really afraid” of giving birth. She said the stairs were never locked and the child did not stay in them all the time, but she “was not part of the family.”
In a statement read to the court, the child’s foster carer said: “It became very clear that she did not know her name when we contacted her.”
Defense barrister Matthew Dunford said the woman’s mental health, a volatile relationship with the child’s abusive father and the Covid lockdown had combined to create an “extraordinary set of circumstances”.
He added that the other children, who were well cared for, no longer lived with their mother.
