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A woman who pleaded guilty to the manslaughter of her son has been jailed for 22 years, with the judge describing her acts of starving the boy to severe malnutrition as “cold-blooded annihilation.”
The High Court. File photo: Kyle Lam/HKFP.The 37-year-old woman, identified as “L.S.T.,” received her sentence for manslaughter and ill-treatment of a child at the High Court on Monday.
She pleaded guilty to the charges in June, when the court heard that her 5-year-old son was believed by a doctor not to have eaten for two to three months prior to his death in September 2022, based on his calorie deficit.
The boy, known as Z, was around one metre tall and weighed only 9.7 kilograms, less than half the average weight for a child that age.
He was also found with 129 injuries on his body, including bruises and marks that appeared to have been caused by a blunt object one or two days before his death.
The mother had a history of substance abuse, the court heard. The defendant had admitted to being addicted to drugs while she was taking care of her three children.
Handing down the sentence, Judge Susana D’Almada Remedios described the case as “horrid, devastating, heart-breaking and tragic,” The Witness reported.
Judge Susana Maria D’Almada Remedios. Photo: Judiciary. Remedios said she rejected the defence’s attribution of her offences to her low education level. She was educated up to Form 4, the equivalent of grade 10.
The defendant had taken care of her other children, X and Y, she said. A friend had told police that the defendant did not like Z, the court had heard.
Remedios said the defendant’s deliberate and cruel abuse of Z, separating him from the other children and starving him, was an abuse of her power as a mother. She had also not allowed Z to go to school.
Her behaviour was “a protracted, cold-blooded annihilation carried out with the patience of a torturer,” she added.
Social worker visits
The woman was arrested in September 2022 after calling the police to report that her son had died. When officers arrived in their Sham Shui Po subdivided flat, they found an unconscious boy lying in bed.
During the June hearing, the court heard that a social worker had been following up with the family for years.
Social Welfare Department. Photo: Kelly Ho/HKFP. Her children had all spent time in children’s homes funded by the Social Welfare Department as she was deemed unable to care for them, though at the time of her arrest, she had custody of them.
A social worker made visits to the mother’s home, with the most recent visit being in June 2022, three months before Z’s death.
In her remarks, as well as at the June hearing, Remedios questioned why the social worker did not raise concerns.
“It strains the imagination to think that Z’s life may have been spared,” she said in her sentencing remarks, adding that it was “incomprehensible” that the social worker did not notice the boy’s malnourishment and stunted growth.
Ahead of the sentencing, the defendant wrote a mitigation letter saying that she was deeply remorseful and could not forgive herself.
She said that, at the time, she neglected Z and did not take him to seek medical help because she was having frequent arguments with her boyfriend, who is Z’s father.
Manslaughter carries a maximum penalty of life imprisonment under Hong Kong law.
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