Jailed for neglect

A mother of seven children was yesterday jailed for 18 months for abandoning her six-year-old daughter and treating her "like an animal" when she left her outside the house or on the balcony for hours on end, without food and with cats as her only companions.

Magistrate Consuelo Scerri Herrera jailed the woman after hearing how the little girl had been rescued from a life of neglect after neighbours reported that, one night, the girl was in the balcony wearing nothing but filthy underwear, surrounded by cats and by human and feline excrement.

The magistrate noted that the maximum punishment by law was a one-year jail term but she upped the punishment by one degree because the offence was a repeated one. The name of the woman and the girl are not being published by court order, to protect the identity of the child.

Magistrate Scerri Herrera heard how the woman's neighbours often noticed that the girl was left waiting on the doorstep of her house for hours at a time in cold weather and she sometimes did her homework there. The magistrate heard a couple who lived next door say that they gradually befriended the little girl who often wore the same filthy clothes.

As the girl started trusting them she accepted food from them so long as they did not let her mother know because she would get angry at her.

The neighbours also told the court that the girl spent whole days on a balcony overlooking an internal yard.

One night the neighbours noticed that the girl was out on the balcony in her underwear and that, on the balcony, there was human excrement. That day, in May 2004, the neighbours filed a police report and members of the police and social workers came to take the girl away with the help of the Civil Protection Department (CPD).

One member of the CPD recounted reaching the girl on the balcony. Before leaving the house, he said, the little girl wanted to take her doll with her but he could not get into the room from the balcony because a wardrobe was blocking the way except for a small space through which the girl could squeeze in and out of the room.

Once he pushed the wardrobe aside he saw that there was a cat on the headboard of the double bed. There was strong stench in the dark room and the door leading into it was locked.

He said the girl was in her underwear which was stained with human excrement. She did not seem to be scared of him. When he asked her what the cat's name was she replied that it did not have a name and wanted to wait for her mother to name it.

The CPD member later knocked at the main door of the house but there was no reply.

The magistrate heard that, after being taken to a home, the girl was visited by doctors who told the court that the girl was very dirty and reeked of cat urine.

The doctors also found the girl to be undernourished, weighing only 20 kilogrammes. On her body were several cat scratches, flea bites and small bruises.

One of the doctors noted that the girl spoke a lot about the 30 cats she spent time with but barely mentioned her mother or her six siblings.

The magistrate also heard how this was not the first time that neighbours intervened and called the authorities about the girl's state.

A psychology officer testified that she had been following the girl's case and that the mother had refused the help offered to her.

On taking the witness stand the mother spoke of her personal history of abuse and neglect.

She started by explaining that, at the age of three, she learnt that she had been adopted and her adoptive mother would tell her that she was not wanted and that her natural mother had wanted to abort her.

From a young age she felt a need to leave the house and wanted to get married for that reason. When she was 17 she met a man whom she married and had four children. But he abused her and beat her and she eventually got the marriage annulled.

She then met another man, whom she felt wanted genuinely to be with her, and got pregnant with the girl in question. It eventually turned out that he was already engaged. Ashamed of what had happened, the woman gave the girl to the crèche where she visited her regularly.

Three years later she took her daughter back from the crèche because she felt guilty. In the meantime she met another man whom she moved in with and worked with. She had twins from him. This man was also abusive and took most of her money.

She became terrified of him, she said. She passed through a rough patch when she "did not have the strength to think".

The woman recounted how she sometimes locked her daughter in the balcony to ensure the girl did not say anything to her partner, although the woman did not specify what she did not want the girl to reveal to him.

Her daughter never told her she was hungry.

She admitted neglecting her daughter but said she had also neglected herself and had gone down from size 12 to size eight.

On evaluating the case, the magistrate ruled that she found it difficult to accept how the mother had abandoned the six-year-old but none of her other six children and that she did not ask for help or accept it when it was offered to her.

The magistrate understood that the mother had faced several problems but she could not accept that this led to her treating a six-year-old girl "like an animal".

On handing down judgement, the magistrate noted that the mother had previous convictions on her criminal record which included forgery and the misappropriation of money from the Federation of Brain Injured Children.

Police Inspector Joseph Mercieca prosecuted.