Cruel parents starved their teen ballerina daughter until she weighed only 4 stone
A couple, from Australia, forced their teenage daughter to follow a strict diet, take part in intense ballet training and taught her to become fully reliant on them - they have been jailed for neglect.
A twisted couple has been jailed after they starved their teenage daughter until she weighed a mere 4 stone.
The girl, who has been kept anonymous, endured the abuse from when she was a child - being fed on a strict vegan diet. Her father was slapped with a prison sentence of six and a half years, while the mother was handed a five-year jail term, both for neglect.
The pair, who cannot be named to protect their daughter’s identity, began to carry out the series of offences when she was a child. She is now 20. A court earlier heard that at the age of 17, she resembled a 9-year-old and weighed just 4.4 stone and was only 4ft 8ins in height.
Her cruel parents subjected her to intense dance training, which was the only social interaction she had outside of her home in Perth, Australia. Parents and teachers at the dance school alerted Australia’s Department of Communities about concerns about her health in 2020. The girl’s father was instructed to take her to the doctor, but he instead went to a GP and pleaded for a letter to state that she was fine.
On April 1, 2021, the parents were pressured to take her to a GP. It was discovered that her father forged her birth certificate and claimed that she was 14. Her parents later said this was a mistake. Her parents told a GP she ate organic pears, strawberries, minestrone soup and ice cream.
The doctor said she was "gravely concerned" about the teen’s condition and instructed her parents to take her to Perth’s Children’s Hospital for emergency admission, reports Mail Online. She was later diagnosed with grade 4 malnutrition before medics ordered X-rays and a feeding tube.
The tube was fitted for five days while doctors came up with a meal plan for her. During this time, her parents attempted to supervise her toilet visits and tried to sleep close to her in the ward in 2021.
After spending a life-changing 50 days in hospital, the girl managed to put on 1.1 stone and grew 1.3ins. The court heard the girl was treated like a small child who watched Teletubbies and Thomas and Tank Engine. Her parents gave her a Barbie doll on her 17th birthday and attempted to organise a Disney Princess visit. Despite this, she showed "no cognitive impairment" regarding her piano skills and schoolwork.
Judge Linda Black turned to the parents and said: "I simply do not and cannot accept that the two of you needed someone to point out to you that your daughter was starving, that she was fading away. That she was failing to grow, that she was failing to thrive. You engaged in wilful blindness of the most extreme kind."
She added: "She was obviously chronically malnourished. Neither of you were starved or malnourished ... therefore I can only conclude that you knew how to make sure you had enough food but you failed to do the same for your daughter."
Despite this, the girl had written to the court last year in the hopes that the prosecution would drop the case. "I will have nowhere to live and I will end up homeless," she said in the letter. Judge Black continued: "You have created a child who was not able to function as an adult at the age of more than 20 years of age."
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