Judge: 'as bad a case as possible to imagine'

From all the evidence that I have heard, I have no doubt that the reason for you purposefully keeping Hamzah away from everybody was because you were failing to nourish him and provide him with even the most basic food. It is entirely clear from the medical evidence that your failure to feed Hamzah was a longstanding feature of his short and unhappy life and lasted for years.

The most telling and awful fact in this case that speaks volumes about how you starved Hamzah is that when his mummified remains were found, he was comfortably clothed in a baby-gro which was designed for a six to nine-month-old child. Moreover, he was found in a cot wearing, at the age of four-and-a-half years, a nappy. So it is then that your case, Amanda Hutton, has to be regarded as as bad a case of unlawful killing of a child by a parent as it is possible to imagine.

The prosecution posed the question at the outset of the case 'How is it possible in 21st century Britain for a four-and-a-half-year-old child to be starved to death?'. Dr Ward, in her evidence, said that there were very few cases indeed in the medical literature of such a thing happening. Although it beggars belief that such a thing can happen, it has, of course, happened here. It has done so through your purposeful, persistent and gross conduct in failing in that most basic and fundamental requirement that is upon every parent, to feed her child adequately.