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A mother who kept her baby hidden in a drawer for three years, never letting him see the light of day or another human being, has been sentenced to seven and a half years in prison in the UK, in a case that has shocked the country.
According to local media, the little girl was found by chance in a state of severe malnutrition and unable to walk or talk in February 2023 by her mother’s partner when he was looking for the bathroom on the upper floor of the house and heard a sound similar to that of a baby.
The first social services worker to arrive at the house after receiving the notice said, in a statement read to the court and reported by the British newspaper ‘The Guardian’, that he was “shocked” by what he saw when he arrived at the house and saw the little girl.
“I was extremely shocked to see the baby staring at me while sitting on a box. She was staring at me and rocking back and forth,” he said.
“ I looked at her mother and asked, ‘Is that where you have her? ’ The mother replied, ‘Yes, in the drawer . ’ I was shocked that she showed no emotion and was left unmoved by the situation,” she added.
Nobody knew the baby
The social worker said the woman had told him that no one else had seen the girl: “(The situation) became a terrifying experience, as she was probably the only other face (the girl) had seen apart from her mother’s,” he recalled.
The baby was born in the bathtub of the house in the English county of Cheshire in March 2020 although her birth was kept secret and never registered.
The mother, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, told police she had been in a relationship with the girl’s father and did not want him to know she was pregnant. She then put the baby in the drawer as a bed and would occasionally come to feed her cereal dissolved in milk using a syringe and change her nappy.
As time went by, the woman went back to work and was absent to take her other children to school, leaving the little girl unattended for hours, even alone on Christmas Eve while she and her other children stayed at their grandparents’ house.
When she was examined by doctors, the little girl could not crawl, walk, speak or make sounds to communicate, and her muscles were weak and her feet were swollen, causing severe developmental delays.
Prosecutor Rachel Worthington said: “ This child has never had a birthday present, a Christmas present or acknowledged anything in recent years. She has had no interaction with her siblings. She had not been exposed to sunlight or fresh air and was not responding to her own name when she was found.”
