A 42-year-old Nigerian woman living in Cardiff, Olabisi Abubakar, is on trial in the UK for the manslaughter and child cruelty that led to the death of her three-year-old son, Taiwo Abubakar.
According to Mail Online, Olabisi, who is charged of killing her three-year-old kid through religious fasting, admitted to investigators that she had “locked herself away” during the COVID-19 outbreak.
At her trial at Cardiff Crown Court, it was revealed that on June 29, 2020, police broke into her flat in the Cathays neighbourhood after a friend expressed concerns for her welfare.
Next to her son Taiwo’s body on a sofa bed sat Olabisi, who was weak, underweight, and dehydrated.
Cardiff Crown Court heard Taiwo weighed 9.8 kilos (22 pounds), with pathologist Dr Stephen Leadbetter finding his death was caused by malnutrition and dehydration.
The court heard Olabisi was sectioned on June 30, 2020 and has remained detained in hospital, where she is being treated for paranoid schizophrenia, Mail Online says.
The prosecutor, Peter Donnison, told the court that Olabisi was deemed fit for police interview in October 2020 and was interviewed by officers on eight occasions.
In one interview, according to Donnison, Olabisi described “the effect on her of the pressures of not having help, fearing coronavirus for herself and her child, and her immigration status.”
Mr Donnison said: “She described them as depressing. She said she was a religious woman and prayed to God and believed he had heard her and answered prayers and kept them safe.
“She had been taking her child out daily but she had to stop doing that due to the coronavirus. She described herself as locking herself away due to the coronavirus and her neighbour.”
Olabisi, an asylum seeker, had been having problems with a neighbour at her home on Camdare Street in Cardiff.
According to the court, she is a fervent Pentecostal Christian who fasts as part of her faith.
Also prosecutors allege that Olabisi forced her small son to fast from food and water alongside her due to concerns about the coronavirus pandemic and personal constraints.
However, in police interviews, Olabisi denied this repeatedly and stated that children should not fast until the age of 12.
