The parents of a 16-year-old girl who weighed 22 stone 13 pound (321 pounds) and died as a result of medical complications from her obesity have been jailed for manslaughter owing to gross negligence.
Kaylea Titford, who had spina bifida and hydrocephalus and had been in a wheelchair since she was a young child, died at her home in Newtown in Wales in October 2020 after suffering inflammation and infection from ulcers, which were blamed on her obesity and immobility.
Her mother, Sarah Lloyd-Jones, 39, pleaded guilty to manslaughter by gross negligence last year but her father, Alun Titford, denied the offence but was found guilty by a jury at Mold Crown Court last month.
The judge, Mr. Justice Martin Griffiths, sentenced Lloyd-Jones and Titford to seven years and six months. It was the first sentencing in Welsh legal history to be televised.
The judge said there was no evidence of any malice from either defendant but he said nor was there any sign of remorse and he said both had tried to “shift the blame” with Titford even blaming his daughter.
The trial heard Kaylea had attended Newtown High School, where teachers described her as “funny and chatty,” and enjoyed playing wheelchair basketball.
But when the COVID-19 pandemic hit Britain in March 2020 and a lockdown was imposed, she was not able to attend school and stayed at home until her death.
Titford gave evidence about the family eating takeaway food four or five nights a week and he said Kaylea had put on two or three stone (28–42 pounds) since the lockdown began.
She had a body mass index (BMI) of 70 at the time of her death, more than twice the mean BMI for women in England and Wales, which is 27.2.
Griffiths said: “They never asked for help they didn’t get. They simply didn’t ask for help.”
Prosecutor Caroline Rees, KC, told Wednesday’s sentencing hearing at Swansea Crown Court: “By the time of her death between October 9–10, Kaylea Titford was living in conditions unfit for any animal, let alone for a vulnerable 16-year-old girl who depended on others for her care. Kaylea lived and died in squalor and degradation.”
During the sentencing hearing, Lloyd-Jones’s lawyer, Lewis Power, KC, said, “Entering the guilty plea was a courageous thing to do given her daughter had died.”
Mother ‘Gradually Overwhelmed’ During Lockdown
He told the court: “During the lockdown period, when so many people suffered not just mentally but in socialisation, she became gradually overwhelmed. Her coping strategies coupled with lockdown led her to develop major depression and she was no longer able to care for her daughter’s needs.”“It escalated to the horrendous situation where she withdrew from her everyday responsibilities and led to the catastrophic outcome,” Power added.
Police officers who searched the bedroom after her death found bottles of urine, a chip fryer with drips of fat running down the side, and an uneaten cake in a box.
Rees claimed Kaylea’s weight had meant she could not fit into her wheelchair and never left her room.
She had been discharged from physiotherapy and dietetics services in the years prior to her death and had last been seen by a social worker in 2017.
Titford claimed Lloyd-Jones, a community care worker, was responsible for looking after Kaylea.
Father Told Trial ‘I’m Lazy’
But under cross-examination by Rees, he accepted he was as much to blame as Lloyd-Jones for Kaylea’s death and when asked why he had let his daughter down he said, “I’m lazy.”Referring to the months before her death, Rees asked Titford, “She hadn’t been out of bed, had she?”
But Titford—who told police he had not seen her out of her bed—tried to claim he had seen her in the kitchen in her wheelchair.
Alan Titford’s barrister, David Elias, KC, said his client worked hard and was not an “indolent man” but he said he had “nothing going on in his life,” and when he came home from work he would often “hide himself away in his room doing very little if anything to assist his partner.”
Powys County Council said a concise child practice review is to be carried out by Powys Teaching Health Board and it would “consider the issues raised by this tragic case.”
After the verdict in Titford’s trial, the judge gave the jurors a 10-year exemption from jury service because of the “unusually distressing” subject matter.
