‘Your daughter was fading before your eyes’: Perth couple jailed over infantalising, starving daughter

“You were thinking of yourself,” Black told the girl’s father, who shook his head in the dock.
“Your daughter was fading before your eyes — she was becoming weak, she was exhibiting signs of severe malnutrition and her life was in danger, but you chose to continue to lie about her age. The most egregious [lie] of all.
“But the strongest emotions the two of you expressed were not about your emaciated daughter, but the people who brought the reality to your attention.”
Doctor’s notes tendered in court recited staff hearing her father claim the girl was at risk of becoming “a junkie” for using the nasogastric tube, while others described witnessing the teenager watching The Wiggles, sitting on her mother’s lap and letting her mother assist her to go to the toilet.
The court was also shown photographs the judge said demonstrated the family’s Floreat home was devoid of anything age-appropriate.
The girl was later placed into a foster care arrangement with family members, but returned to the multimillion-dollar family home on her 18th birthday.
The girl’s father wept in the dock as Black read a letter their daughter had penned in her parents’ defence, maintaining she was solely responsible for her eating habits and that she was completely financially dependent on her parents.
“That is the child you created. The fact your daughter felt she could not survive without you is your fault,” she said.
“You have created a child unable to function as an independent adult at more than 20 years of age.
“The dependence you have created, and the interwoven relationship, means she cannot psychologically grasp the concept that the two people who loved her most were the same two people who neglected her.”
Both parents had vehemently denied the offending, pinning the blame on each of their medically diagnosed obsessive-compulsive disorders, which they claimed impacted their judgment.
But Black rubbished their claims, telling the pair she simply could not accept that they did not see that their daughter was “skin and bone”.
The couple — both aged 48 — have been behind bars since November after the jury took just four hours to find them guilty of engaging in reckless conduct while caring for a child.
In handing down the sentence, Black said the pair both lacked credibility as witnesses, were evasive, endeavoured to avoid the obvious truth and had shown no remorse.
The girl’s mother was sentenced to five years’ jail and her father 6½.
The pair will be eligible for parole.
The judge also lambasted the state’s education department for what she described as a “dismal failure” to ensure the homeschooled child was being adequately monitored.
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