Real life 'Cinderella': Wolverhampton girl starved of food and forced to sleep in shed by mum and stepfather
A cruel father and wife who banished his ‘Cinderella’ stepdaughter to sleep on a scrap of carpet in their garden shed for 12 months were each starting jail sentences of four years three months today.
The child was locked out of the family’s Wolverhampton home at night, starved of food and forced to wear threadbare cast offs from her well dressed brother and sisters during almost four years of misery.
She was so hungry she stole food from bins and the lunch boxes of fellow pupils while also begging for help from strangers in the street, Wolverhampton Crown Court heard.
The famished child’s unsated craving for sustenance drove her to bite into her own arm, revealed Mr Geoff Whelan, prosecuting.
Life in the cold, damp outhouse left the grossly underweight girl suffering from Trench Foot, more commonly associated with soldiers in the First World War and seen in a child only once before by the medical expert who examined her.
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The child’s mother, aged in her 40s, who is now pregnant with her fifth child, ignored the complaint that could have led to amputation and told her to ‘run it off,’ the court was told.
The girl was targeted after the 44-year-old step father moved in with the family in 2008. He launched a terror campaign against her, threatening to staple her eyes together and to throw a party when she died.
The victim, who cannot be identified, was first ordered to sleep in the hall before being ordered to the outhouse where she spent every night for a year between the ages of 11 and 12.
A family support worker said the victim’s brother and sister were always immaculately turned out in new clothes while the girl appeared with holes in inappropriate outfits.
Her brother was allowed to go on school trips denied to her on the orders of her mother and step father.
She was given one, small main meal a week in a household where the chest freezer and fridge were full of food, continued Mr Whelan who added: “This was serious cruelty and long term neglect over a three year period.”
The dishevelled, unwashed girl - nicknamed ‘Tramp’ by bullies at school and blighted by head lice - was trapped in a cruel ‘Cinderella-type situation,’ according to another medic.
She gradually disclosed details of her physical and emotional abuse after being taken into voluntary care aged 12, prompting police to launch an investigation in August 2014.
The couple, without previous convictions, tried to blame the child, claiming she lived in the outhouse from ‘choice’ and only pleaded guilty to child cruelty between January 2010 and November 2013 shortly before their trial was due to start.
