How a Mother's 'Callous Disregard' for Her 6-Year-Old Daughter Led to the Girl's Starvation Death By KC Baker

Content warning: The following article contains disturbing descriptions.

An Australian mother admitted neglecting her children so severely that one was hospitalized with lice eggs in her hair and dirt caked on her feet — and later died from cardiac arrest linked to poor nutrition.

On Tuesday, Nov. 4, Crystal Hanley, 49, appeared in South Australia’s Supreme Court for a victim impact hearing after pleading guilty in May to the criminal neglect of three of her children, according to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Hanley was charged with more crimes — two counts of criminal neglect and one count of manslaughter — but those charges were dropped as part of her plea agreement with prosecutors, ABC reports.

Hanley’s 6-year-old daughter, Charlie Nowland, died on July 15, 2022, because of “cardiac failure associated with anemia and severe iron deficiency,” prosecutors said, ABC reports.

Charlie weighed just 18kg — 39 lbs. — and was covered with lice infestations when emergency services personnel found the child unresponsive at her home in Munno Para on July 15, 2022.

“In simple terms, she was so severely malnourished to the point where her body essentially collapsed, and her heart gave way,” prosecutor Kos Lesses said in court, ABC reports.

Lesses said that during phone calls between Hanley and Charlie’s father, the mom displayed “callous disregard for Charlie’s ongoing and deteriorating health condition.”

Hanley will be sentenced at a future date. 

While she was in court on Tuesday, her children — along with emergency services and hospital personnel — delivered impact statements about the severe abuse and neglect Charlie suffered at her mother’s hands.

Before Charlie died, she lost the ability to walk, but her mother didn’t seek medical attention, Lesses said.

Hanley did call emergency services “at about 1 a.m.” on July 15, 2022, when Charlie fell “off the makeshift bed, which was apparently a bench, and she had stopped breathing,” he told the court.

Emergency nurse Angela Dente told the court how Charlie’s head, ears and nose were covered with lice eggs, 7 News reports.

Her hands and feet were caked with so much dirt that hospital personnel had to scrape it off of her body, Dente testified.

“I kept looking at her little sweet face,” she said, per 7 News.

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She added, “I was shocked to be told that what I thought was dried up vomit strewn through her hair … was in fact a head full of lice eggs.”

Hanley’s other children blasted their mother for not caring for them, 7News reports.

“I had to be a parent to Charlie because you weren’t,” one of her children said, 7 News reports.

“You were selfish,” the child said. “All you cared about was drugs when you should have cared about us.”

Hanley had acknowledged her faults in previous hearings, 7News reports.

“I’m not a perfect mum but I feed my kids,” she said.

If you suspect child abuse, call the Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-4-A-Child or 1-800-422-4453, or go to www.childhelp.org. All calls are toll-free and confidential. The hotline is available 24/7 in more than 170 languages.