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Mother Jailed 22 Years for Starving Son, 5, to Death
🇭🇰 Hong Kong /Crime & Justice

Mother Jailed 22 Years for Starving Son, 5, to Death

From Hong Kong Free Press · () English

Translated from English, summarized and contextualized by DistantNews.

At a glance

News Named sources Outcome reported
  • A woman has been sentenced to 22 years in prison for the manslaughter of her 5-year-old son, whom she starved to death.
  • The child was found severely malnourished, weighing less than half the average for his age, and had 129 injuries on his body.
  • The judge criticized the mother's actions as "cold-blooded annihilation" and questioned why social workers involved with the family did not intervene sooner.

A 37-year-old woman, identified as L.S.T., has been sentenced to 22 years in prison for the manslaughter of her 5-year-old son, Z. The High Court handed down the sentence on Monday after the mother pleaded guilty to manslaughter and ill-treatment of a child in June. The court heard that the boy had likely not eaten for two to three months prior to his death in September 2022, suffering from severe calorie deficit.

cold-blooded annihilation

— Judge Susana D’Almada RemediosDescribing the mother's acts of starving her son to severe malnutrition.

At the time of his death, Z was only one meter tall and weighed a mere 9.7 kilograms, less than half the average weight for a child his age. His body bore 129 injuries, including bruises and marks consistent with blunt force trauma inflicted shortly before his death. The court was also informed of the mother's history of substance abuse and addiction to drugs while caring for her three children.

horrid, devastating, heart-breaking and tragic

— Judge Susana D’Almada RemediosDescribing the overall nature of the case.

Judge Susana D’Almada Remedios described the case as "horrid, devastating, heart-breaking and tragic." She rejected the defense's attempt to attribute the crimes to the mother's low education level, noting she had completed up to grade 10. The judge emphasized that the mother's deliberate and cruel abuse of Z, including isolating him from his siblings and starving him, constituted an abuse of her maternal authority. She also prevented him from attending school.

a protracted, cold-blooded annihilation carried out with the patience of a torturer

— Judge Susana D’Almada RemediosFurther characterizing the defendant's abuse of her son.

Remedios characterized the abuse as "a protracted, cold-blooded annihilation carried out with the patience of a torturer." The woman was arrested in September 2022 after calling the police to report her son's death. Officers found the boy unconscious in bed at their Sham Shui Po subdivided flat. A social worker had been monitoring the family for years, with the most recent visit occurring just three months before Z's death. The judge expressed bewilderment, stating it was "incomprehensible" that the social worker did not notice the boy's severe malnourishment and stunted growth, suggesting that Z's life might have been spared if concerns had been raised.

It strains the imagination to think that Z’s life may have been spared

— Judge Susana D’Almada RemediosQuestioning why social workers did not intervene more effectively.
DistantNews Editorial

Originally published by Hong Kong Free Press in English. Translated, summarized, and contextualized by our editorial team with added local perspective. Read our editorial standards.

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