Girl, 17 starved: Parents Walk Free After Court Overturns Conviction

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The court decision on Tuesday shocked observers who had followed one of Western Australia's most disturbing child abuse cases in recent memory.

The couple — who cannot be named to protect the identity of their daughter had been jailed in January 2025 following a jury trial that exposed years of extreme neglect inside one of Perth's wealthiest suburbs.

The father had received a sentence of more than six years behind bars, while the mother received five years, both with parole eligibility. Those sentences are now on hold.

The Court of Appeal set aside both convictions and granted each parent bail, with a $50,000 personal undertaking and $50,000 surety. The court has not yet published its full reasoning for the decision.

The couple is due back in the District Court on April 24, where a hearing will determine whether a reitrial proceeds.

The original trial laid bare a harrowing picture of a teenager kept in a state of extreme physical and social dependence by her own parents.

The girl who was enrolled in ballet classes with children two to three years her junior after her parents falsified her birth certificate, was admitted to Perth Children's Hospital in 2021 weighing just 28 kilograms, aged nearly 17.

Doctors testified she would not have survived without immediate medical intervention.

Photographs tendered to the court showed a severely emaciated young woman with visible protruding bones, thinning hair and a hollowed complexion.

She was unable to dress herself, prepare food, use basic household tools or manage personal hygiene.

The court heard she was home-schooled and lived in near-total dependence on her parents. It was teachers at her ballet school who ultimately raised the alarm, flagging concerns about her appearance, size and stamina to health authorities.

When her parents refused to consent to tube feeding during her hospitalisation, she was placed in state care.

The father separately pleaded guilty to forging his daughter's birth certificate to conceal her true age.

Sentencing judge Linda Black described the parents as "grossly negligent," acknowledging they loved their daughter while finding they had catastrophically failed to act in her interests.

The daughter, now an adult, attended court for her parents’ sentencing last year.