Heartless couple left vulnerable daughter, 32, to waste away in squalid bedroom

When paramedics arrived at Alan and Bernita Davies’s home on May 26, 2023, they didn’t need to see their daughter Steffie to know she had died.

The dreadful smell coming from the 32-year-old’s squalid ground floor bedroom confirmed that. But it did nothing to diminish their shock when they peeled back the duvet and found her ‘almost skeletal’.

Steffie’s skin was covered in pressure sores, and an extreme lack of mobility had caused her hands to deform, which would have made eating or drinking unaided almost impossible.

Mrs Davies told detectives she had seen her daughter lying in bed reading or asleep in the days before she called 999, but jurors at Mold Crown Court heard Steffie had likely been dead long before.  

She weighed just five stone nine pounds, despite being five foot seven inches tall, and a pathologist found she died from sepsis due to infected pressure ulcers, very low body weight and poor nutritional status.

Andrew Jones KC, prosecuting, said: ‘She had been left in a terrible state to die.’

In a statement, Steffie’s sister said she had shown potential at college, where she studied animal care, but her anxiety grew as she got older and she found it hard to leave the house.

The older sibling, who was not named in court and had been estranged from their parents for several years, said: ‘With the right support and encouragement from my mum and dad, she could have done so much with her life.

‘Instead, she was left to fade into insignificance in the most inhumane way possible. No sentence could ever be able to atone for that.’

Alan and Bernita Davies – both 60, admitted causing or allowing the death of their daughter, who had anxiety and rarely left the house.

They are being sentenced today.

Distressing photos of her injuries were not shown in court after Mrs Justice Stacey said she wanted to ‘preserve, if possible, some of Steffie’s dignity in death’.

The court heard a recording of the 999 call made by Mrs Davies to report her daughter’s death at about 8.30am on May 26, 2023.

Mrs Davies could be heard crying in the call, in which she told an operator her daughter was ‘cold’ and ‘like a skeleton’.

The court heard it was not possible to establish when Ms Davies died, but ulcers on her body had been there for at least six weeks, according to an expert.

Mr and Mrs Davies, who both made no comment in police interviews, were initially charged with gross negligence manslaughter – but guilty pleas to the charge of causing or allowing their daughter’s death were accepted earlier this year.

Maria Masselis, defending Mrs Davies, said: ‘The defendant’s plea is a public acknowledgement that she failed her daughter in terms of providing adequate care.

‘That’s a responsibility that will stay with her for the rest of her life.’

The court heard the couple had been together for 34 years and had three children, as well as an 18-month-old grandchild they were in contact with.

Simon Rogers, defending Mr Davies, said: ‘This is not a case where the defendant felt any malevolence towards Steffie, there is no ill feeling towards her, he never wished her harm, yet he must accept that through his inaction that led to her death.’

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