Coal bunker cruelty parents jailed - Local

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Coal bunker cruelty parents jailed

Published on 28/05/2012 13:20

A mother and stepfather who forced their 11-year-old son to live in a filthy converted coal bunker in Lancashire have each been jailed for two years.

Bullied and constantly hungry, the traumatised boy was made to live and sleep in the room, described as a “cell” by social workers, and reduced to using a potty as he was locked up each night until morning.

The rubbish-strewn room had no heating, a bare lightbulb, and concrete walls and floor, with the child left to sleep on a dirty mattress with a sleeping bag for a blanket.

The couple in their 40s, who cannot be named for legal reasons, both admitted a single charge of cruelty by wilful neglect between January 2010 and January 2011 at an earlier hearing at Preston Crown Court. Sentencing, Judge Norman Wright told the Blackpool pair: “This was a flagrant abuse of power and a gross breach of trust.”

He added: “The room has been described as a cell but it seems to me it was akin to a prison cell from a third world country, not the home of an 11- or 12-year-old living in this century in this country.”

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Coal bunker cruelty parents jailed

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