Daniel White and Jas Dhaliwal of Citadel Chambers prosecuted in a longstanding case involving allegations of child cruelty and assault against the two defendant’s children and step children. 

The Birmingham couple who repeatedly beat, starved and neglected their children have been jailed. The mother was sentenced to seven years and five months imprisonment and the father to ten years, plus an additional seven days for an offence of failing to surrender to the Crown court when required. Neither of the defendants were born in the UK. They each had several children from previous relationships, but did not share any together. Five of the children were the subject of the abuse, one of whom was an adult, but extremely vulnerable.

The defendants kept their children in what the police described as, “horrendous conditions” – a rodent-infested house with cat faeces on the floor, dirty rooms, no bedding and several of the children did not even have toothbrushes.

They threatened some of their children that they would hang them upside down from a tree, kept them off school for months, withheld food from them for days at a time and even once lied, telling them that their grandmother had committed suicide. 

The defendants were only caught after one of the bruised and battered boys, aged 13, ran away into Birmingham City centre last August and was spotted, stumbling around, by a paramedic. That child had fled the home after being made to hold a large brick above his head for as long as he could, which was part of a brutal ‘training’ method, causing his hands to bleed.

A press article upon the case can be found here: https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/midlands-news/birmingham-couple-beat-starved-threatened-30498115