Lancashire Police
A couple have faced court charged with extreme neglect of their four children after being found by police in ‘feral and dangerous’ home, starved, covered in faeces and rashes.
Police in Lancashire, UK, who raided the home were initially confronted by the couple, a man, 23, and a woman, 29 – who can’t be named to protect the identity of the children.
After hearing what sounded like a child behind a door, the officers investigated and found a horrific scene, reports Daily Mail.
‘Officers found there was faecal matter smeared and sprayed across the walls and indeed it had become apparent that the lower half appeared to have been repainted,’ prosecutor, Francis McEntree told the court.
‘The officers noted 15 heavily soiled nappies full of urine and faecal matter which was open to the air.
‘The floor itself was covered in faeces and scraps or stale food and there appeared to be intermingling of the two.’
Apparently it was so bad some officers vomited at the sight and smell.
‘Within that room were two children, dressed in just T-shirts.’
‘One of them had dried blood across the bridge of this nose and upper lip. Their appearance was described as dishevelled and dirty with food in his hair and stains around the body.
Another toddler, a little girl, was found trapped underneath an upturned bed frame in the next bedroom, and a baby strapped to a bounced right next to a gas heater.
The children apparently showed no emotion, and we ‘like zombies’.
The house had no food, except for ‘cannabis in a slow cooker’, no hot running water, and the bathtub was reportedly filled with paint.
The father’s defense tried to downplay the situation, saying that it wasn’t intentional neglect on the part of the 23-year-old but that he got in over his head.
‘This was not somebody who was being deliberately cruel – he was an inadequate young man feeling he could do it all himself.’
‘He tried to sort things out himself but they got worse and worse.’
The father was sentenced for 14 months, while the mother was given a suspended sentence after the judge accepted that her mental health was too poor to ‘cope’ in prison.
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