Rhyl couple jailed for keeping children in squalor
By News Wales

A RHYL couple who kept their two children in “unimaginable squalor” have received prison sentences.

Matthew Bryer, 37, who had a previous conviction for neglecting his children, was jailed for 16 months and his wife, Joanne, 41, for 16 months but it was suspended for two years. Both blamed each other for what happened and said that they and the children, a girl of five and a boy of three, had only been living in the horrific conditions found by police for a matter of days.

But that was rejected by Judge Mergyn Hughes QC who said that when police visited the Bryer’s home in Ffordd Las, Rhyl, last August they found conditions of such squalor that they were almost beyond imagination”.

The Judge said: “This is not a case of untidiness or a low level of cleanliness It was a situation and gross and serious neglect, such that it is difficult to understand how anyone could live there, least of all expose two very young children aged five and three to such a high risk of infection and disease.”

He was told the children were on the at risk register, that social services visited the home but often could not gain access, and that probation officers also supervised Mr Bryer.

The judge said that it was regrettable that such a state of affairs should have continued despite the involvement of social services and the probation service.

Bryer’s was being supervised by the probation service and the judge said that while this did not extend to the supervision of the children, it was “regrettable that in addition to the attendances that social services had, or ought to have had, that this state of affairs should continued as it did”.

Mold Crown Court was told how there was dog and cat muck throughout the house including on the bed where the children slept.

There were animals dead and alive in the house which was filthy and both children were infected with fleas.

The parents admitted two child neglect charges and were told that a court would decide if they were fit to have their children back.