The mother of a three-year-old girl has been jailed after she kept her child in a drawer under the bed. Authorities said the child had never seen daylight until she was rescued.
The girl was kept hidden in a drawer for the first three years of her life. She was only discovered by her mother's partner in February 2023 when he had gone upstairs to use the toilet. He opened the drawer after he heard a noise that sounded like a baby and discovered the little girl with matted hair and showing signs of dehydration. A social worker was called to the house after the discovery.
"I was taken aback by what I saw and was extremely shocked to see a baby looking up at me sat in a divan drawer. [The child] stared at me and was rocking back and forth," the social worker said in a statement read to the court, as quoted by The Guardian.
Authorities did not release the identity of the girl or members of her family to keep her protected.
Why Did the Mother Leave the Child in the Drawer?
The girl's mother told authorities that she gave birth to the child in the bathtub of her Cheshire home in March 2020. However, she kept the birth a secret from the father of the baby, who she said was abusive. The child was also never registered.
To hide the child, she kept her baby in the drawer under the bed and would return now and again to feed her child Weetabix---a breakfast cereal---through a syringe. The girl would sometimes be left alone in the drawer for hours on end. In one case, she was left there overnight after her mom went to stay with her parents on Christmas Eve.
What Is the Child's Condition?
The three-year-old has since been examined by health professionals who said she could not crawl, walk, talk, or even make any communicative noise. Being locked in the drawer also led to her having floppy limbs and swollen feet. She was neglected to the point that her development was equivalent to that of a 10-month-old baby, per the Crown Prosecution Services (CPS).
Furthermore, officials said the child had never seen daylight or the face of another human apart from her mother until she was rescued.
The three-year-old is currently in foster care, and she has begun to vocalize. She will require further surgery.
The mother, on the other hand, has pleaded guilty to four charges of child cruelty. She will be imprisoned for seven years and six months.
