A mother who kept her baby daughter in a drawer under her bed for almost three years has been jailed for seven and a half years in Britain.
The woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was jailed at Chester Crown Court in northwest England after the judge said the child – who was discovered weeks before her third birthday – had endured a “living death” as a result of her mother’s “terrible secret.”
The unnamed toddler was found with matted hair, rashes and some deformities at the family home in Cheshire, according to the PA Media news agency, which reported on the case.
The court was told that the woman, who admitted four counts of child cruelty last month, hid the infant from her partner, who regularly stayed at the family home, as well as her other children.
“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.”
He added: “You attempted to control this situation as carefully as you could but by sheer chance your terrible secret was discovered.
“The consequences for (the child) were nothing short of catastrophic – physically, psychologically and socially.”
Girl now ‘slowly coming to life’ in care
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.
Partner discovered child by accident
When the woman’s partner began to stay over, she moved the child to another room, where she was left on her own, the court heard.
But he eventually came across the child when he went back into the house one day to use the bathroom and heard a noise coming from one of the bedrooms. He alerted family members and later that day social services attended the property, where they found the girl in a drawer.
When confronted, the mother “did not show any emotion and appeared blasé,” the social worker told the court in a statement.
“It became an overwhelming horror that I was probably the only other face (the child) had seen apart from her mother’s,” the social worker added.
During an interview with police, the woman said had not known she had been pregnant and was “really scared” giving birth. She said the drawer was never closed and that the baby did not remain it at all times, but that she was “not part of the family.”
In a statement read out to the court, the child’s foster carer said: “It became very apparent she did not know her own name when we called her.”
Defense attorney Matthew Dunford said the woman’s mental health, a volatile relationship with the child’s abusive father and the Covid lockdown had combined to create an “exceptional set of circumstances.”
He went on to say that the other children, who were well looked after, no longer live with their mother.