A mother who left her six-year-old daughter at home alone for almost a week has been jailed for 18 months.
A judge ruled that Natalie Terry, 28, should be identified after shocking details of the neglect suffered by the little girl emerged in court.
The child, who had to fend for herself in the freezing house for five days, survived on water, yoghurt and Monster Munch crisps.
The only luxury in the house was a flat-screen TV, and police found cat faeces in virtually every room.
After the first night, the girl woke and dressed herself for school, but when her mother failed to come home she stayed in the house.
The terrified youngster then spent five days looking after herself in the semi-detached property in Dartford, Kent, in November 2010 before finally knocking on a neighbour’s door.
Shaking and sobbing uncontrollably in her nightdress, she told the neighbour: ‘My Mum has left me for five days and she has not come back.’
Maidstone Crown Court heard that when police interviewed Terry before she was arrested, she simply said: ‘I neglected my daughter .
Judge Martin Joy was told that when Terry finally returned home, she visited a neighbour after learning police had taken her daughter away and said: ‘I will not get her back.’
The court heard Terry, who admitted child cruelty charges, had tried to get home before her daughter woke up after working through the night at a shop ten miles away in Woolwich, south-east London.
However, she did not explain where she had been for the five days she left her child alone.
She told police: ‘I am doing everything I can to earn money and keep my job.’
The girl was taken into care, and the Daily Mail has learnt that she has been able to see her mother through supervised visits.
Rejecting calls for Terry to be spared jail through a suspended sentence, Judge Joy said: ‘This is a matter of high culpability and the offence is so serious a non-custodial sentence cannot be justified.’
He also rejected submissions from the prosecution and defence that the mother and child should not be named, saying he would ‘exercise the discretion’ he had under the law.
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