Man and wife plead guilty in shocking neglect case that lead to his mother’s death
A DEADBEAT son has admitted leaving his elderly mother to die in a filthy pit of squalor, ignoring her cries for help — but his lawyer has pleaded he not be locked up.
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A DEADBEAT son has admitted leaving his elderly mother to die in a filthy pit of squalor, ignoring her cries for help.
But the 52-year-old man has not been charged with her death.
He and his defacto wife — who cannot be named for legal reasons — on Wednesday pleaded guilty in the County Court to reckless conduct endangering life over the shocking case of neglect.
His wife, now 46, was collecting a carer’s pension to look after the 83-year-old grandmother at their home.
But instead they neglected her, ignoring her screams for help and failing to seek medical attention as her health deteriorated between May 2012 and October 2013.
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She had not eaten and was left to lay in the same soiled nappy for a week before she died on October 13.
Attending police were faced with horrific scenes and a severe stench as they entered the woman’s filthy bedroom, which contained a rotten mattress and flies buzzing around food scraps and general rubbish strewn on the floor.
She weighed about 34kg at the time of her death.
Judge John Carmody, looking at pictures of the home and grandmother on the day she died, questioned how her only son could have turned a blind eye.
“This deterioration of the deceased took a while,” Judge Carmody remarked.
Defence barrister Richard Backwell, for the son, replied: “He had the view it was (his wife’s) responsibility.”
“It’s always someone else,” Judge Carmody said, reflecting on a psychological report tendered in court where the son had deflected blame for his life’s troubles on everyone but himself.
Prosecutor Neill Hutton said while it was the man’s wife who was his mother’s official carer, they both had a duty of care.
Mr Hutton said the pair should not be sentenced over the woman’s death, but instead their “lack of care” for her.
“She was living in what is described as squalor conditions,” Mr Hutton said, adding how wounds on her body were “crusted with dirt”.
An autopsy determined her cause of death as bronchial pneumonia as a result of “severe neglect” or “elder abuse”, he said.
The wife’s lawyer, Moya O’Brien, said her client suffered anxiety and was struggling to care for her five children on top of her mother-in-law at the time.
“Obviously family life was hectic at the time (she) passed away,” Ms O’Brien said, adding the wife was under scrutiny by authorities who had removed her kids from her care in the past.
Ms O’Brien said the family were struggling financially after losing their uninsured home — which the wife had paid for with $180,000 she inherited from her late father — in a fire in 2005.
She argued they were getting no financial enrichment by claiming the $100 fortnightly carer’s allowance.
The prosecution agreed with both defence lawyers that the pair should avoid jail, and a Community Correction Order would be an appropriate sentence.
Judge Carmody will sentence the pair on October 5.