Sentence for woman who kept baby in a drawer not ‘unduly lenient’, court rules
The woman, who cannot be named to protect the identity of her children, was jailed for seven-and-a-half years last November.
The prison sentence given to a mother who kept her baby daughter in a drawer under her bed for almost three years and fed her through a syringe was not “unduly lenient”, the Court of Appeal has ruled.
The woman, who cannot be named to protect the identity of her children, concealed the baby’s presence from her siblings by hiding her in the drawer of a divan bed and kept it secret from her then-partner, who often stayed at the family home in Cheshire.
The child was discovered weeks before her third birthday and was found malnourished with deformities, long fingernails, rashes, matted hair, and unable to crawl, talk, walk or hold a toy.
The woman was jailed for seven years and six months at Chester Crown Court in November last year after admitting child cruelty, with a judge describing the consequences for the child as “nothing short of catastrophic”.
On Tuesday, lawyers for the Solicitor General sought to refer the sentence to the Court of Appeal, claiming it was “unduly lenient” and should be increased.
Three senior judges dismissed the bid following a hearing in London and also threw out a separate appeal bid by the woman, whose barristers claimed at the same hearing that her sentence was too long and should be reduced.
Lord Justice William Davis, sitting with Mr Justice Griffiths and Judge Simon Drew KC, said that the case involved “very extraordinary neglect” and that he had “never encountered a case like this”.
But he said: “We do not consider that this judge’s sentence was unreasonable.
“Rather, the judge took relevant matters into consideration in a comprehensive and careful sentencing exercise, which resulted in a just and proportionate sentence.”
The woman attended the hearing via a video link from prison.
In their ruling, Lord Justice William Davis said that the woman claimed that “she had been unaware she was pregnant” and “told no one of the birth”.
But he said what followed was “continuous and extreme neglect”.
Alistair Richardson, for the Solicitor General, outlined 28 aspects of the cruelty in court, including that the child “had learned not to cry because no one would come for her”, and that she was “subject to extreme neglect to her health, her development and her needs from the moment she was born”.
He said: “The offending was of the utmost gravity, and truly shocking. It is difficult to conceive of a worse case.”
Mr Richardson said that the child was discovered “in a nappy full of urine” and had only been fed a “mixture of Weetabix and milk through a syringe”.
He added that the child was “left on her own when the offender went out” and “left overnight at Christmas”.
The child was discovered when the offender’s then-partner returned to the house one morning to use the toilet after the mother had left.
He was not usually allowed upstairs alone, but heard a noise and entered one of the bedrooms, where he saw the child.
The man left the home and alerted family members, with the child found in the drawer of the bed later that day by social services.
The neglect was so severe that social workers initially believed the child was around seven or eight months old when she was discovered, with floppy limbs and swollen feet.
She had a developmental age of nought to 10 months when she was first taken into hospital and was significantly malnourished and dehydrated.
The woman told social workers she had an abusive relationship with the child’s father and did not want him to find out about her, but told police that the child was “not part of the family”.
At the sentencing hearing, Chester Crown Court heard from the child’s foster carers that she “did not know her own name”.
The court also heard that the woman’s other children were said to have been looked after well, but had been removed from her care.
Matthew Dunford, representing the woman on Tuesday, acknowledged the case was “very serious” but said there was “substantial mitigation” including her mental health, which should have been “factored into the equation more than it was”.
He said: “It is not an excuse, but it goes some way to explaining what happened.”
The Crown Prosecution Service said in November that the child “has continued to make progress” and had undergone operations in hospital.
