Hong Kong, Sep 25 (DPA) A Hong Kong mother was Tuesday jailed for neglecting her four young sons so badly that they could only speak baby language.
The boys, aged three to seven, were found by social workers to be malnourished. They had suffered broken bones and had the speaking ability of babies after the mother’s arrest in April last year.
Medical examinations revealed the boys had suffered bone fractures, developmental problems and malnutrition. The youngest weighed 5.65 kg, about a third of the weight of a normal toddler of the same age.
The boys, conceived during relationships with two different men, were kept from school by their mother and when they were offered McDonald’s food by social workers, they did not know what it was, the mother’s trial was told. There are more than 200 McDonald’s restaurants in the city of 6.9 million.
The mother of the boys, Kwok Mei-yee, 25, pleaded guilty to three charges of child neglect between July 2001 and July 2006. At her sentencing Tuesday, she was jailed for four years.
The three boys were brought to the attention of social workers when the youngest was taken to hospital suffering from bruises, a head injury and a broken collarbone, injuries the mother blamed on her boyfriend.
All three boys and a baby girl who Kwok gave birth to following her arrest have now been taken into foster care.
At the High Court Tuesday, deputy judge Derek Pang said Kwok had displayed no remorse at the way she had mistreated her sons.