Baby's heartbreaking response to hearing her own name after being hidden away for years

A little girl who was subjected to extreme neglect for the first three years of her life didn't respond to her own name when she was first found. The mum of the baby, who cannot be named for legal reasons to protect the identity of the child, hid the girl's birth from family and friends and placed her in a drawer beneath her bed.

The little girl was born in 2020, but it wasn't until February 2023 that she was discovered by the mum's partner who heard a noise from what he thought to be a baby. He had gone back into the house to use the toilet after the mum had left her keys in the door. She usually didn’t allow him upstairs alone.

He followed the noise and discovered a child of almost three years old with a cleft palate, matted hair and clearly malnourished. He ran from the house in shock and told his mum who then rang the mum of the defendant.

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Social workers and police were called. The child's foster carer revealed the little girl didn't even seem aware of her own name. A statement read: "It became very apparent she did not know her own name when we called her."

Following enquiries, it was found the child had spent much of her life hidden in a bedroom at the address, even sleeping in a drawer under the bed. The woman came back now and again to feed her milky Weetabix through a medicine syringe and change the child’s nappies.

As time went on, the mum went to work and took her other children to school and left the child in the drawer, alone for hours on end, including leaving her overnight on Christmas Eve while she went with her other children to stay with her parents.

Recalling the moment she saw the child, a social worker described her “overwhelming horror” at the scene that confronted her on entering the bedroom. The social worker said: "Since March 2023 I have thought about (the baby) and this case often. My initial feelings and thoughts when we entered the mother’s bedroom was of disbelief.

"From entering this room, the bed was high, possibly a double mattress, so I could not see (the baby). Her mother walked round the side of the bed and I followed. I was taken aback by what I saw and was extremely shocked to see a baby looking up at me sat in a divan drawer.

"(The baby) stared at me and was rocking back and forth. I looked at her mum and asked, ‘Is this where you keep her?’ The mother replied matter of factly, ‘yes in the drawer.’ I was shocked the mother did not show any emotion and appeared blasé about the situation."

The mum later told police officers that she’d been in an abusive relationship with the father of the baby and didn’t want to tell him she was pregnant. When the baby was examined by medical experts, she could not crawl, walk, talk or make any communicative noises and made repetitive “self-soothing” movements, such as rocking.

She also had floppy limbs, swollen feet in an abnormal position and redness to the outer limbs. Within two weeks of her admission to hospital, the child was vocalising, seeking adult comfort and crying to make her needs known.

In a statement read out to court, the child's foster carer said the little girl "initially would not like to be touched" but "she has got better certainly with me."

The foster carer added: "She will come to me, she will give me a hug, but if she doesn’t want you to touch her or put your hand on her she will pick it up and move it away from her.

"X has had her first Christmas with us, we have done so many ‘firsts’ with her, putting her in a swing and she just sat there not knowing what to do or expect. Her first step, her first word.

"It is so sad to think so many of these things are her firsts but it is lovely to be able to spend these moments with her. We have taught her to smile, initially we would have to tickle her or make her laugh to make her smile.

"As soon as the tickling would stop, her face would drop. Her eyes made me so upset when there were moments like this because it was if they weren’t focused on anything or us, they were looking everywhere."

Judge Steven Everett said what the child's mum did "totally defies belief." He said: "You starved that little girl of any love, attention or interaction with others, a proper diet, much needed medical attention for a cleft palate....That little waif was locked in a room on her own. What you did was wicked beyond belief. Your actions were catastrophic. She is now coming to life from what was possibly a living death."