High Court report reveals extent of cruelty suffered by starvation victim Khyra Ishaq
New evidence has emerged about the brutal treatment of tragic Birmingham girl Khyra Ishaq, who starved to death at the hands of her mother and stepfather.
Two of Khyra’s five siblings nearly died in hospital because of “Re-feeding syndrome” a phenomenon first seen in the Nazi concentration camps of Eastern Europe.
Details of their harrowing five-month detention is included in a previously unreleased judgment from last year’s month-long care proceedings at Birmingham County Court.
It found that only the strongest children managed to eat as the six youngsters were forced to “eat like dogs” out of a shared bowl in an upstairs bedroom.
The starvation of the surviving children was so extreme that two other siblings were close to death.
Read the court documents here.
Experts had to refer to cases involving concentration camp prisoners, famine children in Africa and IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands, from the early 1980s.
The cases were worse than in western children during the last depression. In Khyra’s case there was no body fat or muscle mass left when she died.
Hospital staff were so emotionally affected by the state of the surviving children that they allowed them to eat too much and it nearly killed two of them.
Re-feeding happened when survivors of concentration camps ate too soon after starvation and simply dropped down dead because their bodies shut down.
Doctors said the youngsters only survived the condition because of the strength of their young hearts.
Khyra, who had “significant learning difficulties” was also beaten with a stick a few hours before her death whilst Junaid Abuhamza sang songs.
She was forced to stand in front of a cold fan with her hands on her head and she slept on a wooden floor because she wet the bed.
Her hair was also forcibly shaved off by her mother (despite Khyra’s screams) six days before her death because it was falling out in clumps because of malnutrition.
A post-mortem found that she had 60 external injuries and lay dying with pneumonia and meningitis for two days whilst her mother was downstairs using her laptop and eating a takeaway with Junaid Abuhamza. The other children were given leftovers upstairs in the same room where their sister died overnight.
