A mom who kept her child in a drawer for three years uttered a chilling four-word response when she was discovered.
The woman from the UK, who cannot be named to protect the identity of her child, has since been jailed for 'extreme neglect' after her toddler was found.
A UK court was told how in February 2023 police and social services were informed that a child had been discovered hidden in a bedroom at an address in Cheshire.
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Upon finding the toddler in the drawer, the child was immediately taken into care.
Further enquiries found that the child had been born in March 2020 but had been kept secret from friends and family and had never been registered.
The child spent much of its life hidden in a bedroom at the address, even sleeping in a drawer under the bed.
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The mother would come back now and again to feed her milky Weetabix through a medicine syringe and change the child’s nappies, though the toddler would spend hours alone in a drawer as the woman went to work and took her other child to school.
The girl was said to be severely malnourished, while she had a cleft palate and several other medical issues that the mother didn't seek treatment for.
A social worker described her 'overwhelming horror' at what she saw on entering the bedroom.
The social worker said: "Since March 2023 I have thought about (the baby) and this case often. My initial feelings and thoughts when we entered the mother’s bedroom was of disbelief.
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"From entering this room, the bed was high, possibly a double mattress, so I could not see (the baby). Her mother walked round the side of the bed and I followed.
"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 social worker asked the mother whether it was the drawer where she kept her baby, to which she replied: 'yes, in the drawer'.
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Judge Steven Everett, who sentenced the woman to seven years and six months in prison on Tuesday (November 26), said: "You starved that little girl of any love, attention or interaction with others, a proper diet, much needed medical attention for a cleft palate....That little waif was locked in a room on her own.
"What you did was wicked beyond belief. Your actions were catastrophic. She is now coming to life from what was possibly a living death."
Callum Jones