By SHAUNA ANDERSON
Warning: This post deals with themes of child abuse and may be distressing for some readers.
Update:
The parents of a four-year-old boy who was found just days from death after being locked in his filthy room have been jailed for at least six years.
Judge Paul Cuthbertson of in the South Australian District Court said what the parents had done to their boy was a ‘disgrace’, the Daily Mail reports.
He said in court that a doctor described the boy as looking like a concentration camp victim.
Previously, Mamamia wrote:
Squalid, stinking and filthy.
A room filled with used nappies and fecal matter.
A four-year old boy just days from death.
Another disgrace. Another shocking neglectful scene with horrors that simply should not take place in the Australia we know.
Another tale of a child agency letting down the most vulnerable.
Another life ruined.
And sadly it will bloody well happen again.
It has to stop.
This time a four-year old boy in Adelaide.
His parents in court yesterday facing charges of endangering their son’s life.
The court heard that the young boy – now aged five –was just 8.3 kilos when he was discovered by police. His parents fed him by sliding plates of custard or jelly under the door of the locked room he was kept in.
Not named for legal reasons the 28-year-old father and the 24-year-old mother pleaded guilty to the charges.
Nine News reports that the mother said she was too busy having sex to worry about her son.
“I’ve messed up, I’ve done the wrong thing. I know I shouldn’t have thought about my man before my son,”
“I didn’t associate with my child like I should have, instead I was too busy having sex with (her partner).”
Police discovered the little boy living in squalor when the mother called them to her home to report her partner for domestic violence.
What they found shocked them.
A four-year old boy starving. Locked in his room.
The court heard from doctors who said his dehydration level was at 10% and was two days away from reaching a critical level of 15%.
He was surrounded by his own used nappies. His own feces.
A bathroom filled to the brink with bags of garbage – the two adults in the house too high on cannabis or too drunk to be bothered to remove them.
Hallways littered with bottles of alcohol, dozens upon dozens of empty cans of the high energy drink Mother.
Rotting food.
A toilet surrounded knee high by used toilet paper.
Top Comments
Not too busy having sex - too busy substance abusing. And just generally not giving a crap about their kid. And why is it all on the mother? The father is equally to blame. Twisted, twisted people. May that little boy get all the love and help he needs to recover as much as possible. Poor baby.
6 years is the maximum sentence she won't even serve that I hope that little boy is In a family that loves him. Her parental rights should be terminated