Negligent parents who subjected thier 5 children to live in squalor for years have now being jailed
Unnamed 41-year-old mum and a 36-year-old dad have being jailed for 2 years for grossly neglecting their children who continuously lived in filth and suffered poor health. This should serve as a wake up call to some parents that children are born to be raised and not to raise themselves.
The Daily Mail UK reports;
An unemployed couple have been jailed for subjecting five of their children to ‘appalling neglect’ which left them all infested with lice and so dirty their teachers would wash their clothes. The children – aged between three to 14 – ‘suffered terribly’ over years of neglect at the hands of the married couple, Gloucester crown court heard. The youngsters were forced to live in squalour, in a room which stank of faeces and urine, and were infested with fleas.
The couple, who cannot be named, failed to keep medical appointments for the children, whose health was seriously affected by the filth which surrounded them, Judge Jamie Tabor said. The court was told the children lived in a filthy, stinking house but it was only when the couple’s youngest child, a three-year-old girl, was admitted to hospital with severe nappy rash that the scale of the neglect was realised by the care agencies.
Soon after the little girl was admitted to hospital her two brothers, both aged 4, were also taken in and then urgent care proceedings were launched to remove all the couple’s children from them. The youngsters were suffering malnutrition, lice and flea infestations and were grubby and smelly, said prosecutor Kerry Barker. One teacher had often been unable to stand the smell of one of the girls and had to walk away from her, it was said. Two boys, aged 4, were not potty trained and were still wearing nappies, he said. One headteacher even washed one of the girls’ clothes herself at school because they smelt so badly.
When police went to arrest the parents at their home two months after the children had gone they were shocked at the filthy state of the house. The childrens’ bedrooms stank of urine and animal faeces, and the court was told that dirty clothing was still lying around on the floors. The kitchen was filthy and smelled of stale food. The house was generally grimy and dirty, Mr Barker said.
‘The officers were shocked that children had been allowed to live in those conditions. And, of course, that was two months after the children had been removed,’ said Mr Barker. Jailing the 41-year-old mother for two years and her husband, aged 36, for two years, the judge told them they had not been deliberately cruel but they were ‘nadequate, stupid, stubborn and incompetent’ parents.
He told the pair it was likely the children – who have now all been taken into care and are being adopted – would be scarred for life by the ‘abject failure and negligence of their parents.’ The woman already had six children at the time she met and married her husband. The couple then went on to have three more children and the judge said they must have done so believing they were able to cope. However, he said the jobless couple had failed totally to do so – despite receiving State benefits to assist in the children’s care and upbringing. Originally the couple were charged with neglect of all nine children but later the prosecution dropped charges relating to the eldest five.
The pair, from the Stroud area of Gloucestershire then pleaded guilty to neglect of the five younger children between July 2007 and December 2012. For years the smelly, lice-ridden, undernourished state of the children had been obvious to teachers and medical professionals who repeatedly contacted the parents to voice their concerns, Mr Barker said. The situation dragged on because the mother, particularly, failed to engage with the agencies and did not keep appointments with doctors and social workers. She would get angry and hostile when professionals contacted her about their concerns for the children. The couple had been due to be sentenced last Friday but took drugs overdoses on Thursday night and were admitted to Gloucestershire Royal Hospital.
They were discharged on Friday night and have spent the weekend at home under the supervision of a mental health crisis team. Today the woman’s solicitor, Steve Young, said it had been a genuine suicide bid because she felt that she had nothing left to live for.
Jailing the pair, Judge Tabor said ‘This is not a case of deliberate hurtful behaviour and assault but one of wilful neglect.’ He said the consequences for the couple were that they would never see their children again. ‘Both defendants are inadequate, stupid, stubborn, and incompetent but they did not deliberately inflict pain and suffering on the children and they tried their limited best to bring up the children.’ He said he took into account that both the woman and her husband have physical disabilities but he said that should have meant they weighed up carefully whether to have children together in addition to the woman’s six from a previous relationship. They had been a dysfunctional family and even the help of the woman’s elder daughters had failed to prevent the ‘terrible suffering’ of the younger children, he said.
He spoke of the ‘utter neglect’ of a girl, now 16, who became ‘socially isolated with head lice so bad that she was ostracised by others.’ The judge told the couple ‘You must have known the smell from her was overpowering. She had a urinary tract infection but you failed to keep medical appointments with her and that led to her condition becoming chronic.’ The girl whose plight brought the whole case to light had serious nappy rash which resulted from the couple failing ‘in the most basic parental function,’ he said. ‘The aggravating features are that five children suffered at your hands; the period of time of the neglect was long; there was a failure on many occasions, but not always, to seek medical help; on occasions you were obstructive to others who tried to help.’
See pictures of the squalor in which the couple lived with their five kids
Source: Daily Mail UK