In the UK a woman who killed her six-year-old stepson Arthur Labinjo-Hughes after weeks and weeks of inexplicably harrowing and relentless cruel torture in a “campaign of cruelty” against the boy has been sentenced to life in prison with a minimum term of 29 years.
32-year-old Emma Tustin was sentenced for murder, alongside the boy’s father, 29-year-old Thomas Hughes, who was given 21 years in prison for manslaughter.
The evil pair were convicted on Thursday after an eight-week trial that revealed in unmitigated cold detail how the child had been physically assaulted, poisoned with salt and forced to stand in isolation for up to 14 hours a day in the weeks leading up to his death.
The youngster was found to have 130 injuries all over his body after being hit, slapped, kicked, punched, and beaten, “over and over”.
An investigation has been launched into local social services, which failed to detect the abuse that began when Hughes moved him and his son into Tustin’s home during lockdown last year.
Prosecutors said Arthur was subjected to “incomprehensible and escalating cruelty” over the subsequent months.
He sustained an “unsurvivable brain injury” when he was attacked by his stepmother on 16 June 2020, and 130 bruises were found on his body when he was admitted to hospital.
