Secret baby kept in drawer's heartbreaking reaction to hearing own name, and how she was cruelly fed

A mother has been jailed for "extreme neglect" after her daughter was found in a drawer underneath her bed. The little girl was only discovered when the mother's partner heard the child's cry from underneath the bed when he was at the home alone.

The woman from Chester, who cannot be publicly named in order to protect her child's identity, kept the child in a drawer which was in her divan bed. She then kept the existence of the child hidden from her other children.

While the woman's other children were being taken out, the girl was left at home alone in the drawer. This included when the family had gone to stay with relatives over Christmas, the Mirror reports.

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It was only when her mother's boyfriend began to stay over that she was moved. Then she was locked up in a different room.

The boyfriend would eventually discover the girl when he came back to the house one morning to use the loo after her mother had gone out. After hearing a noise he went into one of the bedrooms.

There he found the child. After leaving the home initially, he then alerted other members of the family later in the day.

Social services were then called, and found the child in the drawer of the bed. Chester Crown Court heard that the three-year-old girl had deformities, matted hair, and rashes.

The court also heard that the mother had not sought out assistance for her daughter's cleft palate. She had also fed the child by giving her milky Weetabix through a syringe.

In a heartbreaking development, the child's foster carer revealed that she 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."

Recalling the moment she saw the child, a social worker said that she had asked the mother if that was where she kept the child. The social worker said: "She replied matter of factly 'yes, in the drawer'.

"I was shocked the mother did not show any emotion and appeared blasé about the situation. It became an overwhelming horror that I was probably the only other face (the child) had seen apart from her mother's."

Sion ap Mihangel, prosecuting, said: "She was kept in a drawer in the bedroom, not taken outside, not socialised, no interaction with anybody else." He said that the child was found to have a developmental age of zero to 10 months when she was taken to hospital for the first time. She was also dehydrated and significantly malnourished.

Honorary Recorder of Chester Judge Steven Everett said: "The consequences for [the child] were nothing short of catastrophic - physically, psychologically and socially." He said the infant was an "intelligent little girl who is now perhaps slowly coming to life from what was almost a living death in that room".

The girl's mother told police that she had not been aware that she was pregnant and had been "really scared" when she gave birth. She said that the baby had not been kept in the drawer under the bed all the time, and that the drawer had never been closed.

Nonetheless, she told officers that the child was "not part of the family". She went on to say that she had an abusive relationship with the girl's father, and had not wanted him to find out about her.

In October she pleaded guilty to four counts of child cruelty. These reflected her failure to seek basic medical care for the girl, as well as abandonment, malnourishment, and general neglect.

Senior crown prosecutor Rachel Worthington, of CPS Mersey-Cheshire, said: "This child has never had a birthday present, a Christmas present or anything to recognise these days. She's had no interaction with any of her siblings. She hadn't known daylight or fresh air and didn't respond to her own name when she was first found."

She added: "The motive behind the mother's behaviour is still not clear, but that is not the role of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS). Our job is to bring the person responsible to justice. That has now been done and it is the profound hope of the CPS that the victim in this case recovers sufficiently to live as full a life as possible."