Pathetic

Take a look at this (extracted from today of 18.06.2008) which caught my attention today:-

Very Pathetic!!!

Mother of dead twins says ‘I don’t think I fed them enough’

SYDNEY — The mother of twin toddlers found dead in their bedroom told the police they may have starved to death, an Australian court heard yesterday.

The decaying bodies of the 18-month old twins — a boy and a girl — were found by a sibling, who smelled something unusual in their suburban home in the east coast city of Brisbane, the court was told.

Their 28-year-old father and 30-year-old mother appeared on charges of failing to provide necessities of life after the police discovered the deaths on Monday evening, the national AAP news agency reported.

The police found the bodies in a “state of decay” and the children appeared to be malnourished, prosecutor Michelle Clarke said. The mother allegedly told the police she had noticed the twins were dead on June 8 or 9, adding that she had been suffering from a cold and rarely fed or changed them.

When asked by the authorities how the twins died, the mother allegedly said: “I don’t think I fed them enough.” One weighed four kilogrammes and the other, even less.

The father told the police that he did not know the they were dead until Monday, although he had walked past their room several times since their death a week earlier, the court heard.

The couple’s other four children reportedly said they had rarely seen the twins, who had been kept in the front room of the house for most of their lives. The prosecutor said that when the corpses were found by an 11-year-old sibling, the child went to the mother and said: “I know why you have been crying now.”

The court heard the parents were undergoing “significant relationship problems” and the man failed to support the children. Magistrate Noel Nunan remanded the couple in custody until tomorrow to await the outcome of a post-mortem examination. He said: “The circumstance of the deaths of the two children is bizarre, given both parents had been in the house for approximately one week since their death.” — AFP