Content warning: The next article has frightening descriptions.
An Australian mother admits to badly neglecting her children, one of whom was hospitalized with lice eggs in her hair and mud caked on her feet before dying of cardiac arrest caused by insufficient nutrition.
Crystal Hanley, 49, appeared in South Australia’s Supreme Court on Tuesday, November 4, for a victim impact hearing after pleading guilty in May to criminal negligence of three of her children, according to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
Hanley was charged with more offenses, including two counts of criminal neglect and one case of manslaughter, but they were dropped as part of her plea agreement with prosecutors, according to ABC.
Charlie Nowland, Hanley’s 6-year-old daughter, died on July 15, 2022, from “cardiac failure associated with anemia and severe iron deficiency,” according to prosecutors, ABC reported.
Charlie weighed only 18kg (39 lbs.) and was covered in lice infestations when emergency personnel discovered her comatose at her house in Munno Para on July 15, 2022.
“In simple terms, she was so severely malnourished that her body essentially collapsed and her heart gave way,” prosecutor Kos Lesses told the court, according to ABC.
Lesses claimed that during phone conversations between Hanley and Charlie’s father, the mother showed “callous disregard for Charlie’s ongoing and deteriorating health condition.”
Hanley will be sentenced at a later date.
While she was in court on Tuesday, her children, as well as emergency services and medical workers, gave impact statements concerning Charlie’s horrific abuse and neglect at the hands of her mother.
Charlie had lost her ability to walk before she died, but her mother did not seek medical attention, according to Lesses.
Hanley did contact emergency personnel “at about 1 a.m.” on July 15, 2022, when Charlie fell “off the makeshift bed, which was apparently a bench, and she had stopped breathing,” he told the court.
According to 7 News, emergency nurse Angela Dente testified in court that Charlie’s head, ears, and nose were covered in lice eggs.
Dente stated that her hands and feet were caked with mud, which hospital officials had to scrub off of her body.
“I kept looking at her little sweet face,” she told 7 News.
She went on: “I was shocked to be told that what I thought was dried up vomit strewn through her hair … was in fact a head full of lice eggs.”
Hanley’s other children accused her of neglecting them, according to 7News.
“I had to be Charlie’s parent because you weren’t,” one of her children told 7 News.
“You were selfish,” the child explained. “All you cared about was drugs when you should have cared about us.”
Hanley admitted to her mistakes in earlier sessions, according to 7News.
“I’m not a perfect mum but I feed my kids,” she told me.
