A British mother who hid her sick baby in a drawer under her bed for the first three years of her life has been sentenced to more than seven years in prison for what authorities described as “extreme neglect.”
The girl, 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, Senior Crown Prosecutor Rachel Worthington said.
The tot was malnourished and unable to crawl, walk, talk or communicate in any way 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 said.
The mother, who has not been identified for legal reasons, had confessed to four charges of child cruelty in October before her sentencing on Tuesday.
Judge Steven Everett told the court the woman had “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 BBC reported.
“An intelligent little girl who is now perhaps slowly coming to life, from what was almost a living death in that room,” he added.
The girl was born in 2020 with a cleft palate inside a bathtub at the Cheshire home, according to the Crown Prosecution Services.
The mom initially fed her, but then, for reasons still unknown, she put the baby in a drawer in her divan bed and left her there, only opening the drawer infrequently to feed her milk-soaked cereal through a syringe and change her diapers, prosecutors said.
She kept the baby a secret from her other children, whom she continued to take to school as she went to work, leaving the baby in the drawer for hours on end.
“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.
The woman’s partner finally discovered the child in February 2023, after he had gone back into the house to use the bathroom after the mom left her keys in the door and he heard crying.
She typically never let him go upstairs alone, prosecutors said.
He followed the noise and found the baby girl with matted hair and clearly looking malnourished. Horrified, he fled the house and called his own mother, who in turn alerted the mom of the defendant, who then called 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.
The mother “did not show any emotion” and “appeared blasé” about the situation.
“I asked had 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.”
In addition to the untreated cleft lip and palate, the baby girl was suffering from dehydration, malnourishment, a swollen abdomen, bad 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 said.
The child was rushed to the hospital and within two weeks was vocalizing and making her needs heard. She has undergone two surgeries to fix the cleft lip and palate, but additional surgeries will be required.
The mother later told investigators that she’d been in an abusive relationship with the father of the baby and didn’t want to tell him she was pregnant.
“This child has been subjected to extreme neglect of her health, development, and basic care needs since before she was born,” Worthington said.
“This case has shocked all the prosecution team and has been very difficult to work on. After reading the evidence, I had to take myself away and try and process what I had read,” she added.
