NSW: Girl, 7, died of starvation and neglect, doctor tells court
21 May 2009 2:14 PM
EAST MAITLAND, NSW, May 21 AAP - Starvation and neglect caused the death of a seven-year-old girl, the doctor who performed her autopsy has told jurors hearing murder charges against her parents.
Kasinathan Nadesan has told the NSW Supreme Court he'd never seen a case like the one that confronted him in November 2007.
Dr Nadesan, a forensic pathologist with the Department of Forensic Medicine in Newcastle, said he was called to the family's home at Hawks Nest, north of Newcastle, on November 2, 2007 - the night the girl died.
The girl's clothing had "the smell of urine and other body odours," he told the court on Thursday.
Crown prosecutor Peter Barnett SC asked the doctor what he thought dark stains on the child's clothing and bedding might have been.
"It may have been a combination of vomit, faecal stains and urine from over a period of time," Dr Nadesan replied.
The doctor also told the jury that the seven-year-old had the bone development of a five-year-old, and all her organs were smaller than what should be expected in a child her age.
"The death was due to starvation and neglect," he said.
Asked his opinion of the level of emaciation of the child, he said: "I have not seen one like this in my 35 years as a doctor."
The girl's parents, a 47-year-old man and a 35-year-old woman, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, have pleaded not guilty to one count each of murder.
Earlier, a former neighbour in the Sydney suburb of Matraville said she saw faeces piled in the corner of the girl's bedroom just after the family moved out to live in Hawks Nest.
"(The girl's) room had piles of faeces in the corner and smelled really bad of, like, wee and poo," the neighbour, who had known the family for approximately five years, told the court.
She said the girl had spent many hours staring from her bedroom window.
However, she had not seen the girl for approximately the last eight months that the family lived in Matraville, because the window had been boarded up.
The girl was found dead in her home in Hawks Nest, north of Newcastle, in November 2007.
The neighbour said that about 18 months before the girl died, she had seen her in a stroller with her mother.
"(She) looked healthy and well ..." she said.
The trial, before Justice Robert Allan Hulme, sitting in East Maitland, is continuing.
