Jailed for 7 years
Sentencing the pair, Judge Alan Goldsack said: “The reality is that behind the closed doors of your home your children were being slowly starved to death.”

Here is a photo of the parents David Askew and Sarah Whittaker, both 24. The children’s plight was discovered when Whittaker phoned for an ambulance in June because one of the twins was “lifeless”. When police officers entered the house, they had difficulty not being sick.

The 12-month-old twin boys were both seriously ill and were taken to hospital. One was put in ICU. Authorities said the boy was like a skeleton and “within hours of death.” He and his twin weighed less than 9 pounds. The most seriously ill twin was passing live maggots into his nappy; these were later identified as the larva of the common housefly. Experts said they had come from the baby ingesting fly-ridden food or from an infestation in the heavily soiled nappies he was found in. Andrew Hatton, prosecuting, said “One doctor said it was the worse case of malnutrition he had ever come across in the UK or outside of the developing world.”

Three other children – now aged eight, four and three – also were found malnourished and filthy in the home. I saw footage on TV last night, and there was human and dog excrament (photo) smeared on the walls and urine on the floors. A court heard how both twins might have died had it not been for the eight-year-old eldest daughter, who acted as ‘mother’ to the youngsters.

Sarah Whittaker and David Askew spent their time in a comfortable lounge with a satellite TV, DVD players, a computer, video recorder and games, while their children lived in squalor.

All five children were taken into foster care and are apparently making a good recovery.

EXPLAIN TO ME WHY it is not COMPULSORY that these people are sterilized for their crime? They will only continue to breed unwanted children that once discovered are taken away by the state to go into foster care. Sterilization in extreme cases like this should be the obvious action to take. It need not affect their sexual functioning, just their ability to breed.