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Letters of guilt from jailed mum: I failed my angel girl
A JAILED mum who failed to notice her daughter had been dead for two days says the tragic tot she starved and neglected was a "little angel" - and that her cruel partner was "a fabulous husband".
In an astonishing series of letters written from behind bars Sabrina Hirst, now aged 23, admitted she failed her "precious first-born little girl" Tiffany Wright.
But she added: "I miss her so much and would give anything to have her back in my life."
Hirst locked away her tiny three-year-old for hours on end in a squalid flat above The Scarbrough Arms in Upperthorpe, Sheffield, failed to feed her, and left the toddler to fend for herself.
Tiffany, who had not put on any weight at all in the last year of her life, had been dead for up to two days when her lifeless body was finally noticed by her mother and stepfather Robert Hirst. She was covered in insect bites, in a flat infested with beetles and soiled with dog excrement and dirty nappies, and was lying on a filthy bed without covers.
She had not been fed for at least 20 hours, and had been suffering bronchial pneumonia - a condition more commonly associated with famine victims - for which her parents got her no medical help.
Sabrina Hirst was jailed for 12 years after pleading guilty to manslaughter. Robert Hirst, now 46, was locked up for child cruelty. The couple had initially been charged with murder.
In one letter penned from prison to a relative five days after her arrest, Sabrina Hirst - then eight months' pregnant - lamented: "Six months ago I had it all - a fabulous husband, two gorgeous children, one little bump on the way, a home albeit not a good one, and a steady job.
"Now I've lost my precious first-born little girl. I miss her so much and would give anything to have her back in my life."
A few weeks later, in another letter, she admitted she "failed my little angel" but then tried to turn the sympathy on herself, complaining: "I feel totally lost, lonely and empty.
"Someone up there must really hate me, always has and probably always will. Why did it all have to fall apart?"
In her most recent letter she said she plans to collect Tiffany's ashes from a funeral parlour where she has asked for them to be kept until her release from jail.
"I've got the most important thing in the world waiting for me when I get out and that's Tiffany," she said.
Hirst, from Shirecliffe, gave birth to Tiffany in 2004, and in one of her letters said the tot was "the only good thing to come out of my teenage years".
She added: "I was so happy. She finally gave me something good in my life."
But at the time of Tiffany's death Hirst, who worked in the pub she and her husband ran, had been preoccupied with worries her partner was cheating on her, and discovered he was still seeing his ex-wife and children.
In one of her letters from prison she wrote: "When Rob wasn't away with his other family he was on the phone to them or texting them and lying to me about where he was going or meeting them in secret."
On her daughter's last day alive Hirst was heard on the phone discussing concerns about her dog's weight and its feeding problems, while Tiffany starved upstairs.
A Serious Case Review criticised social services and other child care professionals for the way the youngster slipped through the net.
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Friday 10 February 2012
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