Parents jailed for killing disabled teenage daughter

A mother and father who killed their disabled daughter after leaving her bed-ridden in squalor have been jailed.

Kaylea Titford, 16, was found in conditions described as “unfit for any animal”, in soiled clothing and bed linen, following her death at the family home in Newtown, Powys, in October 2020.

The teenager’s parents were sentenced at Swansea Crown Court by Mr Justice Griffiths.

Sarah Lloyd-Jones, 40, was imprisoned for six years while Alun Titford, 45, was told he would spend seven years and six months behind bars.

The 16-year-old weighed 22st 13lb, with a BMI of 70, at the time of her death.

It was the first sentencing hearing in Wales to be filmed since the law was changed to allow cameras into crown courts last year.

Lloyd-Jones had previously pleaded guilty to manslaughter by gross negligence while Titford was convicted of the same offence after trial.

His trial heard Kaylea, who had spina bifida and used a wheelchair, died after suffering inflammation and infection from ulceration, arising from obesity and immobility.

Emergency service workers, who were called to the house after she was found on October 10, described feeling sick due to a “rotting” smell in her room.

Following her death, maggots were found which were thought to have been feeding on her body, the jury was told.

Toilet training pads

The court heard that her bedsheets were soiled and she was lying on a number of puppy toilet training pads.

Her room was said to be dirty and cluttered, with bottles of urine and a chip fryer with drips of fat down the side, as well as a full cake in a box.

Kaylea had attended Newtown High School, where she was described as “funny and chatty” by staff, but did not return following the coronavirus lockdown in March 2020.

Asked during his evidence why he had let his daughter down so badly, the removals worker said: “I’m lazy.”

Titford, who had six children with Lloyd-Jones, said the family would order takeaways four or five nights a week and he thought Kaylea had put on two or three stone since March.

The prosecution alleged that Kaylea had not used her wheelchair, which became too small for her, since the start of lockdown.

Caroline Rees KC, prosecuting, asked Titford: “She hadn’t been out of bed, had she?”

But he claimed he had seen her in the kitchen of the house in her wheelchair during that period, despite telling police in interview that he had not seen her out of bed.

Social worker

The court heard that Kaylea had been discharged from physiotherapy and dietetics services in the years before her death and had last been seen by a social worker at home in 2017.

Titford claimed Lloyd-Jones, who was a community care worker, was responsible for looking after Kaylea.

He said he used to take her to medical appointments and care for her but stepped back when she reached puberty as he was not “comfortable”.

In cross-examination he accepted he was as much to blame for Kaylea’s death as her mother.

Determined

Passing sentence, Mr Justice Griffiths said: “Kaylea Titford made a success of her life. She was funny, determined and fiercely independent.

“She went to a mainstream school. She had a learning assistant to help her with things in school she simply could not do herself. But she would not allow people so much as to push her wheelchair or open a door for her. Everything she could do for herself, she did.

“But she died just after her 16th birthday.

“You, Sarah Lloyd Jones, her mother – and you, Alun Titford, her father – caused her death by shocking and prolonged neglect over lockdown.”

He added: “By the time of her death, she was lying in her own filth, surrounded by flies which bothered her and maggots which fed on her.

“Her flesh was disfigured by ulcers which left her skin open down to the fat and in one place down to the bone.

“The stench created as her body rotted away alive, and from the excrement left to dry unattended around and on her body, and in the room, made paramedic and police officers of long experience retch and feel physically sick when they attended on the body

“The ulcers on Kaylea’s body, caused by pressure sores, lack of hygiene, lack of movement, and lack of professional care, were the worst the expert had ever seen.

“And it is not only the death. I have no doubt that the suffering and degradation she experienced before she died was prolonged and significant.”

He told the pair: “I find it impossible to say that one parent was more to blame than the other. They were both equally responsible and they were both equally culpable.”