OAN Staff Abril Elfi
5:07 PM – Wednesday, November 27, 2024
A British mother, whose identity was not released by the authorities, has now been sentenced to over seven years in prison after keeping her infant in a drawer under her bed for the first three years of her life.
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According to Senior Crown Prosecutor Rachel Worthington, the now-toddler, who “hadn’t known daylight or fresh air,” was only discovered last year, when the mom’s partner heard her crying inside her house in Cheshire, England.
After a lengthy U.K. court process, she has finally met her fate in the recent sentencing.
The now-3-year-old girl was reportedly found malnourished and “unable to crawl, walk, talk or communicate” when authorities found her.
“This child has never had a birthday present, a Christmas present or anything to recognize these days. She’s had no interaction with any of her siblings,” Worthington noted in court.
In October, the mother confessed to four charges of child cruelty.
A surfacing report stated that Judge Steven Everett told the court that the mother had “starved that little girl of any love, any proper affection, any proper attention, any interaction with others, a proper diet, and much-needed medical attention.”
“An intelligent little girl who is now perhaps slowly coming to life, from what was almost a living death in that room,” he added.
According to Crown Prosecution Services, the then-infant, who was born with a cleft palate, was birthed “inside a bathtub” at the Cheshire home in 2020.
Prosecutors claimed that the mother had put the baby in a drawer in her divan bed and then just left her there, only opening the drawer ever so often to feed her “milk-soaked cereal through a syringe” and to change her diapers.
The mother reportedly kept the baby girl a secret from her other children, whom she continued to take to school before going to work, leaving the baby in the drawer for hours on end. It is also unclear how her other children or her partner[s] never discovered the existence of the infant.
“The baby’s growth and physical and mental development was severely impacted by the lack of care, attention and food and the restrictions of a life spent in a drawer,” the Prosecution Services said in a statement.
In February 2023, the woman’s current partner discovered the child when he went back into the house to use the bathroom after the mother left her keys in the door. He suddenly heard crying and decided to investigate.
According to prosecutors, the mother “would never let her partner go upstairs alone.”
The boyfriend quickly followed the crying noise and soon discovered the “malnourished” toddler with matted hair. After the discovery, he fled the house and called his own mother, who in turn alerted the mother of the defendant, who then immediately called the authorities.
“(The baby) stared at me and was rocking back and forth. I looked at her mum and asked, ‘Is this where you keep her?’ The mother replied matter-of-factly, ‘Yes, in the drawer,’” one social worker who responded to the scene testified.
“I asked, has anyone else ever seen (the child)? Mum stated no,” the social worker said. “It became an overwhelming horror that I was probably the only other face [the baby] had seen apart from her mother’s.”
Additionally, in relation to the untreated cleft lip and palate, the baby girl had been suffering from dehydration, malnourishment, a swollen abdomen, diaper rash, and weak muscle mass. She also had “floppy limbs and swollen feet.”
“At the age of 35 months, her development was markedly delayed and was the equivalent to that of a 10-month-old” as a result of the neglect, prosecutors noted.
Soon after, the child was rushed to the hospital and was miraculously able to communicate her needs within two weeks, prosecutors added. She has had two surgeries so far to repair her cleft lip and palate, but more surgeries will likely be required.
Investigators later learned that the mother had allegedly been in an abusive relationship with the infant’s father. She reportedly told the court that she “did not want to tell him she was pregnant,” as they were no longer together in a partnership.
British social media users on X soon chimed in and commented on the disturbing story.
“7.5 year sentence for keeping a child in a draw[er] for 3 years and just feeding the baby girl weetabix and rusk’s. She will be out in 4 years. She has also had her identity kept secret. The world has genuinely lost its mind. This should be a life sentence,” said one user.
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