Gillian Hendry and Craig Dick will both spend the next two years thinking about the neglect they forced their children to suffer.
Parents of a twelve-year-old boy and a two-year-old girl were arrested and the children taken into custody after authorities forced their way into the home in Thornaby, Stockton-on-Tees in August of last year and found the home in deplorable conditions. The kitchen was infested with flies, the bathtub was filled with cold dirty water, and the toilet and sink were filthy. There were bin bags filled with dirty nappies throughout the home, and the children’s beds had no covers and filthy, molded mattresses. The parent’s room was kept in much better conditions, although they claimed they slept downstairs.
The upkeep of the home wasn’t the only thing to shock authorities. The twelve-year-old was in poor health, which is what prompted the doctors to call social services chiefs. He is unable to see out of one eye due to untreated cataracts, and he now has a limp due to juvenile arthritis.
When the parents were asked why they had not been properly caring for the children, they claimed they were too busy, and Hendry claimed she was too depressed.
Judge Howard Crowson of the Teesside Crown Court sentenced Hendry, 34, to two-and-a-half years and Dick, 34, to two years two months.
The boy is now living with his biological father, and the girl, fathered by Dick, has been put up for adoption.