A woman described as the ‘mother from hell’ and her husband have each been jailed for eight years for letting their vulnerable daughter waste away and die.
Steffie Davies, 32, was found lying dead in her bed at the family home in Wrexham, North Wales, in May 2023. She was ‘almost skeletal’, with dirty matted hair, flies around her mouth and her skin was covered in pressure sores and fungal infections.
Her dad Alan Davies told paramedics she had not been out of bed for a year, while her younger brother recalled she had been too weak to even open a box of chocolates he had given her the previous Christmas.
Jailing Steffie’s parents Alan and Bernita Davies, Mrs Justice Stacey said: ‘As she lay in extreme pain, wasting away and dying in the front room of the house, you both carried on with your lives, going to work, feeding yourselves from the well-stocked fridge-freezer and larder, while she lay starving and unable to feed herself in the next door room. You simply ignored her.’
Bernita Davies told detectives she had seen her daughter lying in bed reading or asleep in the days before she called 999, but jurors at Mold Crown Court heard Steffie had likely been dead long before.
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She weighed just five stone nine pounds, despite being five foot seven inches tall, and a pathologist found she died from sepsis due to infected pressure ulcers, very low body weight and poor nutritional status.
Andrew Jones KC, prosecuting, said: ‘She had been left in a terrible state to die.’
In a statement, Steffie’s sister said she had shown potential at college, where she studied animal care, but her anxiety grew as she got older and she found it hard to leave the house.
The older sibling, who was not named in court and had been estranged from their parents for several years, said: ‘With the right support and encouragement from my mum and dad, she could have done so much with her life.
‘Instead, she was left to fade into insignificance in the most inhumane way possible. No sentence could ever be able to atone for that.’
Alan and Bernita Davies – both 60, admitted causing or allowing the death of their daughter, who had anxiety and rarely left the house.
Mrs Justice Stacey said: ‘There is no evidence of her ever having been shown love and affection.
‘Instead, she was verbally abused by you and you showed complete indifference to her suffering.’
Bernita Davies was described as the ‘mother from hell’ by a neighbour because of the way she was shouted at her three children when they were young.
The last time Ms Davies was seen outside the house, in 2017, her mother was seen shouting at her and calling her ‘stupid’, the court heard.
Text messages between mother and daughter showed Bernita Davies ‘ghosting’ her, the judge said, and there was no reply to a message from August 2022 in which Ms Davies asked for something to settle her stomach or protein drinks.
Mrs Justice Stacey said she did not accept there was evidence of ‘genuine remorse’, adding that pre-sentence reports for the couple showed victim-blaming and self-pity.
She said Ms Davies did not have underlying health problems before her death, adding: ‘It was you, her parents, you were the problem.’
The Davies, who both made no comment in police interviews, were initially charged with gross negligence manslaughter but guilty pleas to the lesser charge of causing or allowing their daughter’s death were accepted earlier this year.
Detective Superintendent Sarah-Jayne Williams said: ‘It is difficult to comprehend that a once fit and healthy woman had been able to deteriorate to the point of death with no intervention from her mother and father, who she resided with at the time and would have been fully aware of her deteriorating condition.
‘Both Alan and Bernita Davies have acknowledged the level of care they provided for their daughter was woefully inadequate, which led to her tragic and unavoidable death.’
A spokesman for Wrexham Council said: ‘Steffie Davies was not known to social services in Wrexham, however we will be liaising with North Wales Safeguarding Board in order to consider if this case meets the threshold for a review.’
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