A man has gone on trial accused of manslaughter after his disabled teenage daughter became so obese that she died in “truly horrific circumstances” weighing 146kg (22st 13lbs).
By the time of her death in October 2020, Kaylea Titford, who had spina bifida and hydrocephalus, was “living in conditions unfit for any animal let alone a vulnerable 16-year-old girl who depended entirely on others for her care”, Mold crown court heard.
Her father, Alun Titford, 45, went on trial on Wednesday for manslaughter on the basis of gross negligence. The jury heard that he accepted that he “wasn’t a very good dad” and thought himself guilty of “laziness” but not the death of his daughter.
Sarah Lloyd Jones, Kaylea’s mother, has already pleaded guilty to the same charge, accepting that she failed grossly in her duty of care towards her daughter, the jury heard.
Opening the case for the prosecution, Caroline Rees KC said the “serious failures” of both parents were “hidden from the scrutiny of the outside world from March 2020 by reason of the national lockdown during the global Covid pandemic”.
When police arrived at the family home in Newtown, Powys, on 10 October 2020, they found Kaylea dead. Her bedlinen was soiled and she lay on filthy “puppy pads” that had absorbed leakages from her body. Her hair was dirty and matted and her toenails had not been cut for at least six months. Her skin was severely inflamed and ulcerated, at some points so deeply that fat was exposed.
There were maggots and flies on and around her body, which the prosecution say had been there in life as well as death. The smell was “foul and horrendous”, Rees said. “Kaylea lived and died in squalor and degradation.”
In interviews with police after his arrest, Titford, a removals worker, said he “wasn’t a very good dad and didn’t do much with his children”, Rees told the jury. “He said that the more Kaylea needed help, the less he did but that was because she was female.”
He eventually admitted he should not have relied completely on his partner to do things, “but I can’t help the way I am”.
Titford told detectives he did not cook or clean and his partner did the food shopping. Asked when he had last cooked a meal, he said it would have been when he met Sarah Lloyd Jones 20 years before. The family had takeaways perhaps five nights a week, he said, and Kaylea could not cook for herself.
When detectives asked him how Kaylea was when he last saw her, he said: “I didn’t ask her. Like I say, I’m not the best of people. Nobody ever thinks their child is going to end up like that.”
Just 1.45 metres tall (4ft 8in), Kaylea had a body mass index of 70 when she died.
Asked how the girl’s living conditions had got so bad he said: “Laziness from mine and her mum’s part”; asked whose fault it was, he first said, “It’s nobody’s fault” but then said, “If anybody’s, mine and Sarah”.
The court heard that despite Kaylea’s disabilities, she had not seen a medical professional in the nine months before her death. Titford told police he knew Kaylea had blisters a few weeks before she died, but thought it was not worth the risk of taking her to a doctor “because it was lockdown”.
Kaylea’s spina bifida meant she had little feeling from the waist down and very limited mobility, as she could not use her legs. When she died she had outgrown her wheelchair, which had flat tyres and needed a new front wheel. That meant she was confined to her bed and also that she could not be wheeled into the shower. Titford told police she had not used her en suite bathroom in 12 months and that it was “kept mainly for the dog now”, the jury heard.
Titford was as culpable as his partner in Kaylea’s death, Rees said: “He lived in the same house as Kaylea during the period in which she lived in that degrading condition and he did absolutely nothing about it. The prosecution say that he could not simply wash his hands of his duty as a parent and place all responsibility at the other parent’s door.”
Rees added: “The prosecution say that by the time of her death on the 9-10 October 2020, Kaylea Titford was living in conditions unfit for any animal, let alone a vulnerable 16-year-old girl who depended entirely on others for her care.”
Before the first Covid lockdown in March 2020, Kaylea attended Newtown high school, the court heard, using a wheelchair to get between classrooms. Those who worked with her described her as “fiercely independent” and a “lovely” and “funny and chatty” girl with a great sense of humour, Rees told the jury. She would take part as far as she was able in PE lessons, enjoying basketball, and she would be encouraged to push herself on the running track in her wheelchair.
Her health deteriorated over the next seven months as she was away from the scrutiny of the outside world, and she never returned to school.
Her cause of death was recorded as “inflammation and infection in extensive areas of ulceration arising from obesity and its complications, and immobility in a girl with spina bifida and hydrocephalus”.
The trial continues on Thursday.
