The mother of a three-year-old girl who lay dead for at least two days in a filthy bed, in a beetle-infested room above the pub she ran with her husband was yesterday jailed for 12 years after admitting manslaughter.
Tiffany Wright starved to death above the Scarborough Arms in Sheffield, in a room covered in dog excrement and with exposed electrical wiring. Her stepfather, Robert Hirst, 44, was jailed for five years after pleading guilty to child cruelty.
He and the girl's mother, Sabrina Hirst, kept the child in "squalor, filth and degradation" and "entirely neglected" her, Sheffield crown court heard. They were seemingly unaware that Tiffany had died from bronchial pneumonia caused by severe malnutrition and had not checked on her for at least 36 hours. Tests showed she had not eaten or drunk anything for at least 20 hours. On the day of her daughter's death, Sabrina Hirst spoke on the phone of her worries over her dog, and whether it was eating properly. The court heard that Tiffany weighed about one and half stone (9kg) and had put on less than a kilo in the last two years of her life.
Robert Hirst was captured on the pub's CCTV talking to his sobbing wife after they found the child dead in her room, before the police arrived. He was heard to say: "We've fucked it all up" and "we're going to get banged up for this".
The recorder of Sheffield, Judge Alan Goldsack QC, described the case as "about as bad a case of child manslaughter as there can be". He said: "Most members of the public, particularly parents, will find it impossible to understand how you could treat your children in this way. Unlike some cases involving child cruelty, neither of you have learning or other difficulties which might at least in part explain the situation."
He expressed his surprise that the Crown Prosecution Service had accepted Sabrina Hirst's guilty plea to manslaughter, when she was initially charged with murder.
He said: "Medical evidence is that Tiffany had probably died on the Thursday or Friday. That you either did not know she was dead or chose not to report her death until much later is the most potent evidence of the way you both failed utterly in your parental responsibilities to your daughter. The evidence which has emerged is that Tiffany's death was the culmination of a long course of neglect by the pair of you."
He went on: "One almost unbelievable piece of evidence is that on what was probably Tiffany's last day alive you, Sabrina Hirst, were discussing on the phone concerns you had about one of your dogs' weight and feeding problems."
He said Sabrina Hirst's 12-year sentence was in recognition of her guilty plea.
She would have served a minimum of 22 years if she had been found guilty of murder and 18 years if found guilty of manslaughter, he said.
A charge of manslaughter against Robert Hirst was dropped after the court accepted he had started a new job, assisting a lorry driver, the week before the child's death. He was often away 12 or 13 hours a day, although home at 6pm.
The judge said: "The time lapse between when she was last fed and her death may be as little as 20 hours. She could have been fed at teatime and died before he came home from work the next day."
His failure to check on Tiffany and lack of care of the house had been a breach of duty and was why Robert Hirst was charged with cruelty. The judge added that Sabrina Hirst had "never been able to answer a single question as to how this child could die in her care". The pair also admitted cruelty in relation to a one-year-old who cannot be named.