Mother jailed over daughter's starvation death

A MOTHER was today sentenced to serve 15 years in prison following the death of her seven-year-old daughter from starvation.

Angela Gordon appeared alongside her former partner Junaid Abuhamza who was jailed indefinitely with a minimum term of seven-and-a-half years following the death of Khyra Ishaq.

Khyra died in May 2008 when her body succumbed to an infection after months of starvation at her home in Handsworth, Birmingham.

The pair were cleared of the seven-year-old's murder during a trial at Birmingham Crown Court last month, but convicted of her manslaughter.

Gordon, 35, and Abuhamza, 31, admitted child cruelty charges relating to five other children in their care and control, who were also starved and abused.

Sentencing the pair, Justice Roderick Evans told them their regime of punishment was "chilling in its harshness and cruelty".

He said: "It is not right to say that these children suffered from neglect. Neglect is an inadequate and inappropriate description of the way they were treated.

"Rather, they were subjected to a domestic regime of punishment which was chilling in its harshness and cruelty.

"A regime introduced by you, Abuhamza, as it had its origins in your own upbringing, but a regime to which you, Gordon, became a party."

The court heard Khyra endured a punishment regime that included standing outside in the cold or in front of a fan for long periods, having cold water poured over her and being beaten with a bamboo cane.

The judge said: "A further punishment and one which is central to this case was depriving the children of food.

"It was that deprivation of food, which must have extended over a period on months, which reduced Khyra to the skeletal condition in which we have seen her in the photographs and computer graphics and so compromised her immune system that she was unable to resist infection.

"It was infection resulting from malnutrition which led to the bronchopneumonia and septicaemia which were the immediate cause of her death.

"In real terms, however, she died of starvation in a house in which there was an abundance of food."

Jurors were shown a series of photographs from inside the terraced home Khyra shared with the defendants and five other children, including pictures of a well-stocked kitchen.

Photographs of cupboards packed with groceries and a fridge full of food contrasted sharply with the shocking image of Khyra's skeletal body, seen by the jury.

But prosecutor Timothy Raggatt QC told the court the kitchen was kept locked by a bolt "out of the reach of the children" to prevent them helping themselves to food.

At mealtimes they were given a bowl containing carrots, beans, eggs and rice, or unsweetened porridge, to share between them.

The meagre meal would be placed before them on the floor of the room in which they slept on bare mattresses.

Mr Raggatt told the jury: "The essence of it was this, what they got was a single bowl of food to share between the six of them."

"They didn't get the means to eat it separately. They didn't get separate meals.

The court heard that by the time of her death Khyra had lost about 40% of her body weight and was so thin her body mass index could not be measured on any available chart.