Ten-day 'punishment' of boy, 6, kept in squalid darkened room stained with dried blood and urine (and they get just 6 Months?)- 30th Mar 2011

A six-year-old boy cowered in fear for at least 10 days in a darkened bedroom, surrounded by stale urine, a half-full potty and bloodstains on the bed and floor, a judge was told.

The child was held in the squalid room at his home in Whitley Wood, Reading, Berkshire, as punishment meted out by his mother and her partner.

As he sent them to jail for six months, a clearly shocked Judge Richard Parkes told the couple: 'It seems almost impossible to suppose that he [the boy] has not suffered psychological damage in being treated in such a manifestly unloved and neglectful fashion.'

The couple kept the child a virtual prisoner in the blacked-out bedroom for 10 days without a wash as punishment for misbehaving. They allowed him out only for meals, to go to school and to see his natural father.

A social worker tipped off by a concerned family member paid a surprise visit early on a Saturday afternoon in July and found the boy in bed, in the dark, with no toys, or pictures on the wall.

There were large amounts of days-old blood on his bedding, his floor and his wall from a nosebleed Read More