Mum, gran and sister jailed over death of teenager 'left to rot in lingering death' at their Yorkshire home

A judge who sentenced the three women told them they had condemned teenager Jordan Burling to a “lingering death”.

The judge described the death of Jordan Burling as “beyond belief” as he sent the three women to prison for a total of eight and a half years.

Mr Justice Spencer said the defendants had failed to take the “humane step” of calling for help for Jordan, aged 18, when he was as “quite literally at death’s door”.

Jordan was “skin and bone” and weighed less than six stone when paramedics found him lying on a filthy inflatable mattress, covered in pressure sores at his family home on Butterbowl Garth, Farnley, Leeds, Yorkshire.

Mother Dawn Cranston, 45, was sentenced to four years and grandmother Denise Cranston, 70, was given three years after the pair were convicted of manslaughter after a trial at Leeds Crown Court.

Jordan’s sister, Abigail Burling, 25, was cleared of manslaughter but found guilty of causing or allowing the death of a vulnerable adult.

The judge said: “With proper medical care in hospital his life could undoubtedly have been saved.

“Instead he was condemned to a lingering death, lying for three months on an airbed and mattress in the living room of the family home, emaciated, immobile and doubly incontinent.“No one who has seen photographs of his emaciated body lying in the room where he died, or even more so the photographs taken at his post mortem, will ever be able to forget those images.

“They are too horrific to be published.

“They are hauntingly reminiscent of starving victims in the extermination camps of the Second World War.

“His pitiful state made a deep and lasting impression on experienced paramedics and police officers who attended the scene.”

During the trial, a nursing expert described how the ulcers on Jordan’s body were the worst she had seen in 30 years of practice.

They would have taken weeks, if not months, to develop.

-> Man repeatedly stabbed in front of children during football match in YorkshireThe judge added: “Anyone could see that such horrible wounds required immediate medical attention in hospital.

“Instead you attempted to treat those wounds yourselves, bathing them with salt water, applying nappy rash cream and covering them over with sanitary pads taped on to afford some supposed comfort.

“I cannot accept that Jordan never complained of being in pain, or showed particular signs of pain.

“Salt in the wounds and the movement of any affected limbs must have caused him excruciating pain.

“If it is true that he did not complain of pain it could only be because he was so weak and debilitated that he was unable to express it.”