Social workers knew of girl's plight

Charlotte Avenall, who had severe learning disabilities, was found by her parents hanged in her faeces-covered bedroom after accidentally tying a cord round her neck.

Senior police officers said the room was the filthiest they had ever seen.

The youngster was forced to use a chest of drawers as a toilet as she was locked in her bedroom by her mother and stepfather with no bed linen from 7pm for 12 hours every night, Nottingham Crown Court heard.

The tragedy happened at the home of her mother Susan Moody, 24, and 33-year-old stepfather Simon Moody.

The severely disabled youngster, who had the mental age of a three-year-old, had just learned to tie a knot at school when she wrapped a cord on her bedroom window around her neck.

Her death came after four weeks of neglect at the family's house in Moor Street, Mansfield, Nottinghamshire.

Yesterday, they were both jailed for a year after pleading guilty to a charge of child cruelty at Nottingham Crown Court.

The court heard social services knew Charlotte was vulnerable and had visited the family's home last June.

But when Nottinghamshire social workers tried to visit again in August, when the neglect started, there was no one at home. No follow-up appointment was made, despite the child's school raising concerns.

Judge Joan Butler QC said the couple did not understand "the enormity" of their failure to protect Charlotte. She said: "It's quite plain that the death of Charlotte was a tragic but preventable accident.

"All it would have taken to keep her safe was for somebody to go in to that room and see how it was.

"Your bedroom was on the same floor so it is hardly an onerous task to go across the hall and check.

"Instead, she was left in a foul and filthy mess for four weeks.

"For 12 hours every night for those four weeks you left her in that stinking room and on the day she died you had left her for 14 hours in that room."

Charlotte accidentally hanged herself from a cord tied to a window and then round her pink bunny soft toy.

Susan Moody pleaded guilty earlier to child neglect but claimed she was unwell at the time and had left responsibility for Charlotte to her husband. But that did not stop her trying to become a surrogate mother for a family in Manchester in exchange for 10,000, the court was told.

Despite the squalor of Charlotte's bedroom, the tanks of the family's spiders and lizards were regularly cleaned out.

When a post-mortem examination was carried out, it was found Charlotte's fingernails were overgrown, her scalp was riddled with head lice and her body was dehydrated.

Officers found Charlotte's dirty clothing, much of it covered in her own faeces, strewn around the room.

The day before she was found dead she was learning to tie knots at school.

When she was found, she was kneeling down, her face against the radiator in her room.