To think that neglecting your child to death should be murder (warning: distressing content)

[Onnabugeisha]

I’ve been following the news on the horrendous murder of a vulnerable disabled girl, Kaylea Titford who died at age 16 due to the neglect of her parents.

TW Distressing Details
Kaylea was born with spina bifidia and hydrocephalus. She was a wheelchair user and had no mobility in her lower body. She was fed takeaways five nights a week until she became morbidly obese. Her parents did not ensure nutritious food or that her exercises were done. When the lockdown happened, her mum put to her bed and then left her to die. Kaylea tried to keep clean- they found milk bottles of urine around her bed and soiled puppy pads she was told to use for poo on the floor of her room. She was left unwashed, in soiled clothes & bed linen, with live maggots and flies crawling across her due to ulcerations from being obese and filthy. Six months later, she died in that bed. Only after her mum was sure she was dead did she call 999 for the paramedics who entered the nightmare of that room to the stench of urine, excrement and rotting flesh.

Her mother has plead guilty to manslaughter by gross negligence. Her father has pled not guilty and his trial is ongoing.

This was obviously a premeditated and planned campaign to slowly kill Kaylea in one of the worst and most degrading ways imaginable. I don’t understand how it cannot be murder. It seems to me it takes more evil intent and cruelty to slowly kill a child over six months than in six minutes.

Neglect has long been taken less seriously than physical or sexual abuse imho, even though it technically kills just as many children.

AIBU to think the charges should be murder, not manslaughter?

YANBU= should be murder
YABU= it’s manslaughter (accidental or unintended death)

Assuming she got full DLA/ PIP, they would have had carers, allowance ,enhanced due to.disability tax credits/ universal.credirs ,it's not a fortune but it's a decent amount,I have a severely disabled child so I roughly know the amounts the associated benefits equate to.

Dreadful. I'd bet they were never adequate parents, but pre-lockdown would have had the assistance they so heavily relied upon. Their true colours were shown when this was no longer available.

It’s a lot if you are not using the money to meet the extra costs of having a disabled child!! Extra washing, heating etc

From your own link:

”Mr Titford's representative argued that the father had been let down by social services, adding that Kaylea was discharged from physiotherapy in 2017 and the following year was discharged from a dietetics service because her mother, Sarah Lloyd-Jones, did not book more appointments.”

So they were repeatedly failing to take her to hospital appointments even in 2017, long before lockdown. They were not open to services because they had refused to engage with them. This is neglect, and they cannot hide behind lockdown as an excuse - they used it as an opportunity to neglect her even more, out of sight of everyone.

(I do agree with you that manslaughter isn’t murder and the two shouldn’t be conflated, but this is not a poor struggling parent who couldn’t cope when services were cut during lockdown, it is someone neglecting their child’s medical needs over a prolonged period of many years).

I posted this link on the other thread about Kaylea. I and some others have emailed the Attorney General to request that the sentences be reviewed for being unduly lenient. It is an eligible case because they list child cruelty as one of the types of cases where they review sentences. If you’d also like to request that the sentences be reviewed. Keep in mind you can get a life sentence for manslaughter and the starting point is 12yrs. So Kayleas parents having sentences so far below the starting point is a travesty imho. This was six months of not getting your disabled daughter to a toilet, not getting her in a shower, not trimming her toenails or even changing her socks so they fused to her feet and left the flesh falling off them to the bone, six months of ignoring her pleas for the necessary care and basic humanity any living being is due. Six months of blocking her window so her room was dark as a dungeon. This isn’t oh I was overwhelmed…this was half a year of keeping a child prisoner in a dark, filthy hole and the swearing, mocking and gaslighting her until, she predictably died and they knew this would be the consequence of their neglect. They should be in for much longer than 6 or 7.5 yrs which means out on licence in 4 or 5yrs.

www.gov.uk/ask-crown-court-sentence-review