Two unnamed Australian parents have been sentenced to prison after starving and infantilizing their then-16-year-old daughter. Back in 2021, the girl was found malnourished, only weighing 60 pounds, and needing to be hospitalized, given the frailty of her condition.
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ABC.net reports that both parents homeschooled their daughter, keeping her isolated. They intentionally malnourished her in an attempt to make her appear younger. They also treated her like a preschooler and dressed her accordingly. According to prosecutor Jehna Winter, both parents turned the girl into a "Peter Pan-esque character."
Authorities began to be suspicious of the parents after ballet teachers tipped them off. They noticed that the girl's appearance was abysmal. The girl's ballet class was filled with girls up to three years younger than her. Her parents lied and deceived the ballet academy into thinking that their daughter was contemporary to the rest of the class.
Finally, the girl was in such bad shape that she needed to be hospitalized. Reportedly, he was on the verge of suffering cardiac arrest. However, her parents refused medical staff members to tube feed her at Perth Children's Hospital. It was then that the girl went into state care. Medical staff also found that the girl suffered from emotional and functional developmental delays.
Guilty
Defense attorneys argued that the lack of care of the parents was due to both of them suffering from OCD. However, Judge Linda Black struggled to find a connection between an OCD diagnosis and the malnourishment and neglect that the then-16-year-old girl had to endure.
Moreover, the girl even submitted a letter to the judge, asking for the charges to be dropped against her parents. Not only that, but the girl also blamed herself for everything that happened. Judge Black accepted the letter into consideration. However, she stated that there was a possibility that the girl did not understand fully what she had gone through or what her parents did.
"You have created a child who is not able to function as an independent adult at the age of more than 20 years old," Black told the parents. "She's never been allowed to grow up."
Both 47-year-old parents were found guilty of "engaging in conduct that caused their child to suffer, by failing to provide adequate nutrition," according to ABC.net. Moreover, they were also found guilty of failing to provide emotional, social, and functional health to the now-20-year-old.
The father, in particular, also pleaded guilty to forging his daughter's birth certificate in an attempt to further support the idea that she was younger than she actually was. He will spend six and half years in prison, while the girl's mother will spend only five years behind bars.
