Joe Harker
Warning: This article contains discussion of child abuse which some readers may find distressing.
An Australian couple have been jailed for child neglect after they starved their teenage daughter until she was only as heavy as a small child.
The parents, who cannot be identified, were sentenced in Perth’s District Court of Western Australia with the father receiving six-and-a-half years in prison and the mother getting a lower sentence of five years on account of 'personal circumstances'.
The court heard from witnesses that the parents treated their teenage daughter, who also cannot be identified, like a small child, taking her to the bathroom, blowing her nose for her and having her watch children's cartoons, CNN reports.
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Her father also forged her birth certificate - which he pleaded guilty to - to make her seem two years younger than she actually was, though they denied the other charges.
Judge Linda Black ruling over the case said their house didn't contain anything 'remotely age-appropriate' for the girl.
"This is not a case about a malnourished ballerina," the judge said of this case as she spoke to the parents.
"You isolated your daughter, you prevented her from growing up, you prevented her from developing in the way she was entitled to.
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"You did keep her as a little girl long beyond the age where she should have been."
The girl was home-schooled, though her parents would take her out to ballet lessons, and the judge said that besides her parents, everybody who saw 'understood she was severely malnourished'.
Eventually the girl's ballet teachers contacted officials, and when she was taken to see a doctor, they found she had 'brittle and thin' hair, 'dry and flaking' skin and 'was exhibiting no signs of puberty'.
She was placed in state custody after her parents refused to allow doctors to insert a nasal tube to feed the girl, who gained weight after her mother and father could no longer block her from eating.
The girl's father said that his daughter had been a 'fussy eater', and his legal representative told CNN: "This was never a case about withholding food from a child.
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"My client didn’t starve his kid … He never withheld food from her. He loved and spoiled his daughter. She was free to eat as much as she wanted. This case was about inadequate nutrition from a vegan diet.
“Every parent on this planet knows that if you don’t give a child enough food they will starve. But what if your kid chooses to be vegan?”
The court heard that the child had gone vegetarian when she was eight and went full vegan as a teenager, with the parents saying she had three meals a day and they didn't believe she was malnourished.
During the trial, Judge Black said it was clear that the girl's parents loved their daughter but didn't show it, telling 'a cascading series of lies' to cover up her actual age.
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The girl had sent a letter to the judge asking for the prosecution of her parents to be stopped, saying she was 'fully dependent' on them and that she didn't think she'd be able to cope without them.
If you’ve been affected by any of these issues and want to speak to someone in confidence regarding the welfare of a child, contact the NSPCC on 0808 800 5000, 10am-8pm Monday to Friday. If you are a child seeking advice and support, call Childline for free on 0800 1111, 24/7.