Starved child like a 'skull wrapped in skin'

EAST MAITLAND - Lying in her filthy bedroom, either too weak to move or comatose, a little girl lived out the final days of a miserable life.

At the age of 7, she weighed as much as an average 2-year-old, and her skeletal frame was stripped of fat and muscle.

Doctors would later struggle to find the words to describe the shocking state of dehydration and malnutrition that caused her death.

Her mother, who found her dead about 7am on November 3, 2007, spent several hours with the girl's body before retiring to her bedroom and taking an overdose of prescription drugs.

The father took a break from his online betting about 11am that morning and two hours later made a call reporting her death.

The girl's older sisters kept playing in the Hawks Nest home where the family had lived for two months after moving from Sydney, and later strolled to the picturesque Jimmy's Beach to collect sea shells.

After a day of intense police and forensic activity at the home, the father resumed his online punting with a A$6 ($7.46) bet at 1.29am on November 4.

By the evening of November 4, the older siblings had been seized by welfare authorities, their 35-year-old mother was recovering in Newcastle's Mater Hospital, and police had launched an investigation that would ultimately lead to murder charges against both parents.

Eighteen months later, on May 19, 2009, the parents found themselves standing before a jury of 12 of their peers to answer for their actions, or inactions, that led to the death of their daughter.

They faced separate but concurrent murder trials in the same East Maitland court.

The most shocking evidence came from just four of the 66 witnesses who testified during the 24-day trial. Medical examiner Dr Kasinathan Nadesan and specialist gastroenterologist Dr Edward O'Loughlin gave descriptions of the child's condition that invoked images of the Holocaust.

But both parents tried to convince the jury they had no idea the girl was particularly ill.

At death, the girl was a mere 106cm tall and weighed just 9kg.

The last time she was weighed by a doctor - February 14, 2006 - she had been 20.5kg.

Nadesan, the medical examiner who carried out the post-mortem examination, had no hesitation in telling the jury the girl's death was due to starvation and neglect and that he had never before seen a case like it.

During the trial, the jury heard the couple had four daughters.

The Department of Community Services (DoCS) had taken custody of the youngest when the family was living in Sydney.

The court was told the father went to great lengths from that point not to speak to DoCS workers, and that led to ongoing systematic avoidance of DoCS and other agencies.

O'Loughlin said: "I've seen pictures in textbooks and of Holocaust victims but I've never treated anyone this malnourished."

Asked to describe the girl's state of emaciation, he said it gave her the "appearance of a skull wrapped in skin".

When it came time for the parents to give evidence, the husband wasted no time in blaming his wife.

He said he had seen his daughter only twice in the two months they had lived in Hawks Nest, and that he played no role in her care.

In her evidence, the mother said she "just did not see" the girl's decline.

She maintained the girl was still eating in the days before her death.

Her defence counsel, Dennis Stewart, asked her about pictures of her child taken during the post-mortem examination.

"I did not see [her like] that, I did not see that," she said.

The Crown argued that because the girl had autism and had been hard to manage, the parents made a conscious decision to kill her by starvation.

On the weight of evidence, the jury found for the Crown: a murder conviction for the mother and manslaughter for the father.

And as they had done for the vast majority of the trial, the duo sat almost motionless, staring straight ahead and struggling to raise a tear of remorse. They will be sentenced in August.

- AAP