See Shocking Conditions Couple Left Their Children Live In

Shocking pictures have been released showing how a couple allowed their five children to live in horrible conditions in their home.

The Mirror reports:

Scott Higgins, 42, and Lisa Doxey, 39, from Grimsby, Lincs, each admitted five offences of child cruelty between September 2011 and April last year and were each jailed for three-and-a-half years.

Grimsby Crown Court heard the children’s beds were crawling with lice and there was barely any food or even toilet paper in the squalid and uninhabitable house. The bath was mouldy, the fridge was empty and the house reeked of urine while there were even traces of excrement in rooms. The five children were girls now aged 15, 12, six and two and a boy aged four. The three youngest were the children of Higgins and Lisa was mother to all five.

Andrew Bailey, prosecuting, told Grimsby Crown Court police went to the couple’s home on April 21 last year after a tip-off. He said: “There was no food anywhere in the house, the stairs did not have a carpet on them. The bath was covered in mould and had not been used for a while, the living conditions were uninhabitable and there was a syringe, without a needle, which seemed to have dirty blood in it. In the house, there was a large empty vodka bottle on the floor and there was no food at all in a fridge infested with mould.”

The bath, sink and toilet were covered in excrement with flies hovering around it while the mattresses in the bedrooms were sodden with a strong smell of urine. The children suffered from head lice and bed bugs and the eldest girl was forced not to eat her school lunch so that she could take it home to feed the youngest. They are now, apart from the eldest, living in pairs in foster homes and are said to be doing well.

Richard Butters, mitigating, said: “The house was in a thoroughly disgusting state and was not habitable, even for an animal. The children were neglected and more importantly exposed to significant harm because of those conditions. At least the children are now well physically. There was no intention on the part of the parents to harm these children. It’s simply the state that he was in that caused him to be utterly useless and incapable.”

Simon Hirst, representing Lisa Doxey, said the mother accepted she deserved prison because of her bad behaviour in not looking after the children. He said: “She is very remorseful and relieved things came to an end. The harm to these children was of an emotional type rather than a physical type. Physically these children are all described as very well apart from the nappy rash.”