Canadian mother receives six years in jail for starvation death of daughter with CP

From the St. Catherines Standard in Canada:

Courtney Wise was totally reliant on others.

Stricken with spastic cerebral palsy after a surgical complication when she was nine months old, Courtney couldn’t talk or walk. She couldn’t use her hands or go to the bathroom on her own.

And, perhaps most significantly, she couldn’t feed herself.

The District School Board of Niagara made special arrangements so she could be a student. A school principal obtained dietitians and nurses. The province paid the bill for her canned food supplements.

“What was missing,” said assistant Crown attorney Rick Monette, “was the care component that should have been provided by her mother.”

Astrid Hueller was sentenced to six years in jail Oct. 8 for starving her 17-year-old daughter to death.

The sentence includes six months of pre-trial custody, credited as two-for-one time, leaving Hueller to spend the next five years behind bars.

At the time of Courtney’s death in February 2008 at the family’s north-end Berkley Drive home, she was a mere 35 pounds. She hadn’t seen a health-care professional since August 2006, because Hueller told them she didn’t want their services.

Hueller, 47, was facing charges of second-degree murder and failure to provide the necessities of life, but pleaded guilty to manslaughter in Superior Court last month.

“Courtney was not just a vulnerable victim, tragically she was a helpless victim and one who was dependent on her mother for everything,” Judge Stephen Glithero said in St. Catharines court Thursday.

Glithero said Hueller increasingly cut off contact with health-care agencies and society, becoming more neglectful over time. There was no evidence Hueller stopped loving her child, Glithero said, but she appeared to have lost the will to provide a level of assistance required for Courtney’s survival.

Monette, who made the joint submission with defence lawyer Michael DelGobbo, said the court needed to send out a message to other parents and caregivers of handicapped children that society abhors such behaviour.

“Denunciation and deterrence are the key components the court must consider when sentencing Ms. Hueller,” he said.

Hueller had no family or supporters in the courtroom, just the eyes of more than two dozen high school students on a class trip, about the same age as her daughter when she died.

Glithero asked her if she had anything to say.

“Just that I’m very sorry for all of this,” she replied from the prisoner’s box.

Courtney died Feb. 18, 2008, severely emaciated and dehydrated. She had lice and bed sores, one of which was so severe, a metal rod in her hip was visible.

For reasons known only to Hueller, Monette said she stopped feeding Courtney, depriving her of nutrition until she “withered away and died.”

Monette said although people on feeding tubes are chronically prone to respiratory problems, an expert in pediatrics and cerebral palsy said Courtney had the potential to live many more years.

But at age 17, she weighed less than she did at 6 1/2.

Key to the case were the number of canned food supplements Hueller provided Courtney through her feeding tube. Niagara Regional Police detectives were able to track the number of cans because they were paid for by the government.

Although Hueller was told to feed Courtney six cans of the food per day, she was ordering the equivalent of only 2.7 cans a day in 2003. The number decreased every year until she received only 1.32 cans a day in 2006 and 2007.

Even Hueller’s lawyer said there was no getting around the fact she didn’t take her daughter to a doctor or walk-in clinic for the last three years of her life.

“There’s no greater duty moral or legal than that of a parent to a child,” DelGobbo said. “This case is a clear violation of that duty.”

DelGobbo added the case was not one of violence or trauma to the victim, but neglect.

Courtney underwent heart surgery at age nine months and during the procedure was deprived of oxygen to her brain. As a result, she suffered from spastic cerebral palsy for the rest of her life. She had no control of her urinary tract and bowels and had a tube inserted in her abdomen for feeding.

Hueller was the primary caregiver for her four children, after fleeing an abusive relationship in British Columbia in which her husband held her in a police standoff.

She took care of Courtney for a number of years, but DelGobbo said at some point withdrew from the world, whether due to caregiver burnout or depression.

DelGobbo said it was a very complicated case, one in which some people will have great sympathy for Hueller and her plight in life and others will have no sympathy.

“You’re dealing with an issue that’s highly polarized.”

He asked the judge to consider the fact Hueller pleaded guilty and was a first-time offender.

He also asked Glithero to recommend Hueller serve her sentence in British Columbia, where her family lives, including her children who are now being raised by aunts and uncles.

“Hopefully Ms. Hueller, once released from the penitentiary, can pick up her life and be a good parent to her remaining children,” DelGobbo said.