A four-year-old boy whose body was left in a cot for two years after he was starved to death by his alcoholic mother was “invisible to society”, children’s campaigners have said.
Mother of eight Amanda Hutton, 43, will be sentenced on Friday after she was found guilty of killing her son, Hamzah Khan, by a jury at Bradford Crown Court.
A two-week trial heard how Hamzah’s decomposed and insect-infested body was discovered in a travel cot in Hutton’s bedroom at their home in September 2011.
He died in December 2009 due to malnutrition after his mother’s alcohol addiction took over her life.
Questions are now being asked about how the death of a young boy could go unnoticed for so long, especially after his body was only found due to the tenacity of a rookie police community support officer.
Jodie Dunsmore refused to give up on her feeling that something was wrong at Hutton’s home in the Heaton area of Bradford.
Due to her persistence, police found Hamzah’s remains amid scenes of utter squalor which the judge described as “a terrible Pandora’s box”.
They also found five of his siblings, aged between five and 13, living among the knee-deep pizza boxes, used nappies, vodka bottles and cat faeces.
Seasoned officers described being overcome by emotion as they witnessed one child in the house rummaging among rotting rubbish in a bedroom for items before they took her away and other youngsters in soiled nappies crawling up the stairs.
Neighbours have spoken of their amazement when children they had never seen before emerged from the four-bedroom terraced house on the day the police arrived.
Hutton, who was found guilty of manslaughter yesterday, has previously admitted neglecting the five children who were discovered in the house and another charge of preventing the burial of a corpse.
Her eldest son Tariq, 24, has also admitted the latter charge and will be sentenced on Friday.