Per reports, the 6-year-old boy’s, Arthur, difficulties were only revealed recently when it was far too late. The distressing audio of the young child was played during the trial of his father Thomas and partner Emma, who faced murder charges in addition to other child cruelty charges.
Although the couple have denied having killed the boy, the jury revealed that Arthur died of brain injury after collapsing at Emma’s home while they were alone.
Prosecutors said that the 6-year-old child was subjected to abuse in the months that led to his untimely death. It is alleged that 29-year-old Thomas and 32-year-old Emma forcefully fed the child salt-laced meals, kept him isolated at home, starved, and dehydrated him.
Arthur was also subjected to routine beatings. At the time of his death, Emma claimed that Arthur’s head injury was self-inflicted and that he sustained it by possibly throwing himself down the staircase in the hallway, a place where he had to spend 12 to 14 hours a day as a part of the couple’s startling behavioral regime, according to BBC.
Emma has accepted recording over 200 audio files every time Arthur was punished. She told that the court that the audiotapes were a way to show her partner how his son had been behaving. Two of these heartwrenching audio files have now been made public. In one of them, the young boy can be heard saying, “no-one loves me” and repeating the phrase four times in a 23-second time frame. In the second, 44-second clip, he cries, “no-one’s gonna feed me,” seven times. The internal CCTV camera also captured the frail stature of Arthur in a video that was recorded hours before he collapsed.
The footage, which was also released by the police officials, shows the six-year-old struggling to even pick up and put away his pillow and blanket after waking up around 8:36 a.m. What’s worse, the child did not even have his own bed and would sleep on the lounge floor without a mattress. Clearly, he suffered a great deal even towards the end of his end but the couple continued to maintain that they didn’t cause his death despite it being revealed that Arthur had 130 injuries all over his body, both fresh and old ones. Emma has been sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 29 years for the murder of six-year-old Arthur. Arthur’s father, Thomas, was sentenced to 21 years in prison for his manslaughter.
