International
Mother Jailed For Hiding Baby Daughter In Drawer For Nearly Three Years
A mother in Britain has been sentenced to seven and a half years in prison after keeping her baby daughter in a drawer under her bed for nearly three years.
The woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was sentenced at Chester Crown Court in northwest England, where the judge described the child – discovered just weeks before her third birthday – as having endured a “living death” due to her mother’s actions.
The toddler, whose identity is also protected, was found in a state of neglect, with matted hair, rashes, and some physical deformities, at the family’s Cheshire home, according to reports from PA Media.
The court heard that the mother, who pleaded guilty to four counts of child cruelty last month, kept the infant hidden from her partner and other children who regularly stayed at the home.
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“To my mind, what you did totally defies belief,” PA reported Judge Steven Everett as saying.
“You starved that little girl of any love, any proper affection, any proper attention, any interaction with others, a proper diet, much-needed medical attention.”
“The consequences for (the child) were nothing short of catastrophic – physically, psychologically and socially.”
He went on to tell the court that the child, now in foster care, is an “intelligent little girl who is now perhaps slowly coming to life from what was almost a living death in that room.”
Prosecutor Siôn ap Mihangel said that when the child was taken to hospital she was found to be significantly malnourished and dehydrated. The court heard that she had only been fed milky cereal through a syringe.
She also had a cleft palate, which had been left untreated.
“She was kept in a drawer in the bedroom, not taken outside, not socialised, no interaction with anybody else,” Ap Mihangel said, explaining that she had a developmental age of 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.
When the woman’s partner began staying overnight, she moved the child to a different room, where the toddler was left alone, the court was told.
However, the partner eventually discovered the child after hearing a noise from one of the bedrooms when he returned to the house to use the bathroom. He alerted family members, and later that day, social services arrived at the property, where they found the girl in a drawer.
When questioned, the mother showed little emotion and appeared indifferent, according to the social worker’s testimony in court.
The social worker recalled feeling a deep sense of horror, realizing she may have been the only other person the child had encountered, aside from her mother.
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During a police interview, the woman claimed she hadn’t known she was pregnant and expressed fear when giving birth. She explained that the drawer was never fully closed and that the baby wasn’t kept in it all the time, but insisted the child “wasn’t part of the family.”
In a statement read in court, the child’s foster carer shared a troubling detail: “It became very apparent she did not know her own name when we called her.”
The defence attorney, Matthew Dunford, argued that the woman’s mental health, an abusive relationship with the child’s father, and the challenges of the Covid lockdown contributed to an “exceptional set of circumstances.” He also mentioned that the woman’s other children, who were well cared for, no longer live with her.
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