In 2020, a horrified paramedic was forced to notify social services after seeing the horrible conditions in which spina bifida patient Kaylea Titford’s corpse was discovered.
The parents of the 16-year-old, who was 23 stone at the time of her death, ignored her, but the first Covid lockdown covered up their mistakes.
Before lockdown, Kaylea was “fiercely independent,” but when she was found on a bed covered in maggots, the paramedic said it smelled like “someone had died.”
However, Kaylea was only the most recent in a string of young children whose untimely deaths at the worst of the epidemic stunned the country.
The lockdowns that were implemented in virtually every high-profile case, according to MailOnline’s analysis, served to foster the exact circumstances that made horrifying abuse possible.
Kaylea Titford passed away as a result of her parents’ carelessness.
In October 2020, paramedic Gareth Wyn Evans discovered Kaylea’s death in her bedroom.
She was not breathing when she was discovered, and the paramedic smelled something “horrific” as he pulled back the sheets on her bed, Mold Crown Court was told.
He told the jury that he thought it smelled like “gangrene” or “something nasty” emanating from her legs.
Prior to her death, Kaylea had not had her nails clipped in six months, and ‘fully developed’ maggots were discovered in her body around her buttocks and legs, according to testimony given to the court.
After Kaylea was discovered dead in her bed, her father Alun Titford, 45, was convicted guilty of gross negligence manslaughter last month.
Sarah Lloyd-Jones, Kaylea’s 39-year-old mother, had already entered a guilty plea to the same allegation.
Mr. Wyn Evans testified during Titford’s trial that Kaylea’s room was “cluttered, disgusting, and untidy,” with clothing heaped up on her wheelchair and filthy tableware strewn around.
He said that the scent of Kaylea’s body made him gag, and he had to go outside to get some fresh air after removing electrodes from her ankles to check for an electric impulse.
Later that day, he made a referral to social services for protection, he said to the court.
Prior to lockdown, she participated in high school physical education classes in her wheelchair. However, her parents are accused of allowing her weight to grow and her health to decline by abandoning her in her specially fitted room and failing to keep her clean.
Despite a number of health issues, Kaylea apparently did not visit a doctor in the nine months before to her death and had not been bathed for weeks.
Star Hobson was just 16 months old when her mother’s partner Savannah Brockill killed her. This occurred in September 2020.
She had endured months of abuse before to her death in her Keighley, West Yorkshire, house during the coronavirus lockdown in 2020.
Anne Longfield, the head of the Commission on Young Lives and a former children’s commissioner for England, issued a warning after Star’s death, stating that the Covid lockdown had “provided its own chances for those who damage, groom, and exploit children.”
Brockill was found guilty in December 2021 and is now incarcerated in HMP Styal in Cheshire, where he is serving a life sentence with a minimum of 25 years.
Frankie Smith, Star’s mother, was originally given an eight-year prison term after being found guilty of contributing to or permitting the toddler’s death.
After a legal review, this was raised to 12 years.
Dave Fawcett, the great-grandfather of Star’s murderers, said after their convictions: “It’s awful because there were five referrals.” Social services had five chances to stop Star’s killers. None of them took any action. Really, it’s simply beyond belief.
After being rushed to the hospital with injuries that were deemed “utterly catastrophic” and “unsurvivable,” Star passed away.
According to the prosecution, Star’s injuries led to her death and included serious abdominal cavity injury that was “induced by a severe and violent blow or strikes, either in the form of punching, stamping, or kicking to the abdomen.”
The small girl’s bruises was something that Smith’s relatives and friends saw in the months before to her death, and they reported it to social services many times, according to information shown to the jury.
In each instance, Brockhill and Smith were successful in persuading the social workers that the markings on Star were unintentional or that the complaints were intentionally made by someone who did not approve of their relationship.
murder of Arthur Labinjo-Hughes by his stepmother
Six-year-old Arthur Labinjo-Hughes was killed in June 2020 after suffering torture for many months as a result of the 2020 coronavirus lockdown.
His stepmother Emma Tustin and father Thomas Hughes tormented, starved, and abused Arthur.
After depriving the child of nourishment and force-feeding him salt, Tustin and Hughes murdered the child by repeatedly hitting his head against a hard surface.
Tustin quickly retrieved her phone after murdering Arthur so she could snap a picture of him as he lay dying in the hallway and send it to her partner.
Arthur had “banged his head,” she informed the 999 operator, and she asked for help. The self-pitying stepmother sobbed and attempted to persuade the authorities that the skinny kid had assaulted her once they arrived at her house, all the while the youngster was miles away in the hospital, on life support.
Due to the devastating extent of his injuries, doctors decided there was nothing they could do and switched off his life support the next day, at which point he went dead.
Social workers and police missed four opportunities to save Arthur during the months-long lockdown during which he was being mistreated. They also ignored his family’s cries for help and even threatened them with arrest in accordance with Covid regulations if they tried to visit him at Tustin’s house.
On April 16, 2020, Arthur’s grandma Joanne Hughes phoned social services to report seeing the child with injuries.
Social workers visited his residence, but were unable to find them there.
Ms. Hughes also reported what she had witnessed to Arthur’s school four days later. When a staff member phoned social services, they were informed that the injuries were the result of “play.”
Daniel Hughes, Arthur’s uncle, then called the police to express his worries, but he was warned that he would be arrested if he returned to the child’s house.
The last chance to step in came when John Dutton, Tustin’s stepfather, made a confidential phone contact to social services a few weeks before to Arthur’s death.
When the first lockdown was implemented by the government in March 2020, Hughes and his kid had already moved in with Tustin.
After his natural mother Olivia Labinjo-Halcrow, 29, fatally stabbed Gary Cunningham 12 times with a kitchen knife in a drunken outburst in February 2019, the boy was given into his father’s care.
In contrast to Hughes, who was given a 21-year sentence for manslaughter, Tustin was found guilty of murder and given a minimum term of 29 years in jail.
Tustin’s sentence was then called for to be raised to a life imprisonment.
Logan Mwangi was killed by his 14-year-old brother, stepfather, and mother.
Logan Mwangi was killed by his mother Angharad Williamson, father John Cole, and 14-year-old Craig Mulligan in July 2021 when he was just five years old.
Following a positive Covid test, he was locked in his bedroom, where his corpse was later recovered half drowned in the River Ogmore in Bridgend.
The youngster, who was only 3 feet 5 inches tall and weighed 3 pounds at the time of his death, was malnourished, beaten, and made to do push-ups until he passed out.
Logan had endured a “brutal and persistent attack” in the hours or days before his death, resulting in 56 visible cuts and bruises, “catastrophic” inside wounds compared to a high-speed car collision, and other injuries.
Experts deemed Logan’s wounds “consistent with child abuse,” and prosecutors said that in the months and weeks before his death, Logan’s family had “dehumanized” him.
Following an investigation by safeguarding professionals, it was discovered that Williamson and Cole were able to abuse Logan covertly because of the coronavirus lockdown, which prevented social workers from forcing meetings.
The family was taken off the child protection registry in June 2021, indicating that it was thought there was no longer a serious danger of harm.
Logan’s home was visited by social services the day before he passed away, yet they did nothing after he burnt his neck on a hot bath tap in May 2021.
Cole’s violent criminal history was also known to social services.
Williamson received a sentence of 28 years, Mulligan received 15, and Cole received a sentence of life with a minimum period of 29 years.
Alijah Thomas was choked to death by her mother.
In September 2021, Alijah Thomas, age 5, was murdered by her mother Martina Madarova.
During the Covid lockdown, Madarova’s mental state had deteriorated, and she started drinking.
Due to the judge’s determination that she had “minimal culpability” for her daughter’s death, she was only sentenced to five years in jail.
Before strangling Alijah, Madarova had turned on cartoons as the youngster pleaded with her not to murder her.
At their residence in Ealing, west London, she then “tucked her in with a blanket.”
Prior to murdering her daughter, Madarova was alleged to have grown “increasingly anxious,” which alarmed Madarova’s relatives and friends.
She soon started using alcohol as a “coping technique,” along with worries about her mother catching Covid and being confined to her apartment all day owing to the lockdown.
Father shoots mother and children to death
Using a shotgun, Robert Needham shot and murdered his wife and their two children at the end of March 2020 during the first Covid lockdown.
Daughter Lexi, 2, was shot in the chest, while Ava, 4, was struck in the head. Kelly Fitzgibbons, the mother of the two, was shot in the head and neck.
Needham then shot himself after accruing debts of more than £30,000 with Ms. Fitzgibbons.
Only one week after lockdown was implemented, all four were discovered dead at the detached home in the sleepy community of Woodmancote on Sunday evening, March 29, 2020.
Relatives described the murders as a “diabological catastrophe” in a statement delivered before an inquiry investigating the family’s deaths.
A baby boy who was abandoned to sleep alone in a shed and later died
A two-month-old infant who could only be identified legally as Baby Z during the Covid lockdown in June 2020 perished after being placed in an outhouse-style structure by his parents.
He was found to have stopped breathing by the father, who saw him sleeping in the family’s bedroom. The parents, who are also unable to be recognized for legal reasons, had denied placing him in the shed.
Baby Z was in a bedroom with his parents when the ambulance arrived at the residence. However, a half-hour after he was taken to the hospital, police searched the home and discovered a dummy and some vomit inside the carry-cot that was “tipped up” in the shed.
Although the precise cause of death was unknown, the parents’ attorneys claimed that the infant had passed away from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS).
The cot toppled ‘head first’ off the box, pressing his head against the edge in a ‘unnatural posture,’ according to the court, and this hindered his breathing or ventilation.
The court had been requested to make “findings of fact” on the occurrence so that choices could be made regarding Baby Z’s siblings, both of whom were born after his death. The matter was heard in Liverpool Family Court.
The local government or police department involved is likewise anonymous.
According to Judge Steven Parker, the parents “colluded to present a false version of the facts” to social workers, medical personnel, and law enforcement.
In an anonymous written decision, he detailed how the family had been having difficulties as a result of the overcrowding in the bungalow where they shared a home with baby Z’s paternal grandparents.
When Z died, the mother and father’s relationship was tense due to being in cramped quarters and during a lockdown, lack of sleep and intimacy, and the father’s poor mental health. Judge Parker noted these factors in her ruling.
These issues caused the mother and father to argue and have poor communication, to the point that they were struggling and needed a vacation from raising Z.
“Contrary to safe sleeping recommendations, Z was occasionally left on the floor in a room alone, away from his parents, to weep and self-soothe,” according to the report.
»Lockdowns hurt children, from Star Hobson to Arthur Labinjo-Hughes«