An evil foster mother has been jailed for six years for forcibly starving an orphaned boy to skin and bones so she could claim sickness and disablement state handouts which she frittered on luxuries.
Lyubov Korotkova sobbed in an iron cage in a Russian court before she was led away to start her sentence.
The wicked carer was convicted of ‘special cruelty, humiliation and torture’ in starving and drugging him for eight years and fooling doctors into thinking he had a rare and inexplicable disease.
Foster mother Lyubov Korotkova cried in an iron cage in a Russian court before she was led away to start her sentence
Valery was starved and drugged by the foster mother so she could claim his sick benefits (pictured left when he was removed from her care in May 2017, and again at a later date)
She falsely claimed around £50,000 in state handouts and for a total of seven years – up to the age of 11 – the boy, named as Valery Kondourov, lived in a ‘grave’ medical condition.
She must now pay this money back in full and hand over more than £8,000 in ‘moral damages’ to the child who was removed from her care as soon as her cruelty was exposed.
Before she was exposed, Korotkova – in her 40s – was seen as a local hero in her city Magadan for ‘lovingly’ caring for an exceptionally ill child.
Korotkova was sentenced at a Russian court to six years in prison after she starved orphaned boy Valery Kandaurov
In fact, she had forcibly reduced his weight by starving him of food and plying him with drugs to feign serious illness.
‘The malnutrition was so severe that the 11 year old boy had the weight of a four-year-old child,’ said Svetlana Petrenko, of the Russian Federal Investigative Committee.
The child is now recovering his health with a new foster mother – but his life had been in acute danger with Korotkova, say medics.
‘For eight years she deliberately was not feeding her fostered child in order to register him as disabled and receive benefits and sickness payments,’ said Petrenko.
‘During all these years the woman was seeing many different doctors with her child, asking them to check him for multiple diseases, including cancer.
‘As a result, the doctors – who were cheated – could not pinpoint the right diagnosis.’
Korotkova deprived Valery of food and fed him pills which made him sick in order to fake a rare stomach condition
Aged 11, Valery weighed just two stone and measured 3ft 5ins, typical for a boy half his age. He could still fit into the clothes he owned when he was adopted, aged 3 (pictured)
The suspicions of a senior doctor who eventually examined the child led to the boy being removed from her care – and her being unmasked as a cheat.
The medic found the child was entirely healthy – apart from the appalling damage inflicted by the toaster mother.
At the age of 11, Valery was just 3ft 5 inches tall – more like a five-year-old.
The court was told she deliberately hatched a criminal plan to steal benefits and hid her scheme even from her husband Andrei who helped her care for the child.
Korotkova (right) was told by Svetlana Petrenko of the Russian Federal Investigative Committee: ‘The malnutrition was so severe that the 11 year old boy had the weight of a four-year-old child’
She starved him and ‘made him take medical drugs to build up the clinical manifestation of a stomach disease’.
She also home-schooled the boy, so he was never seen by teachers.
The investigative committee was told: ‘Having cheated the doctors, she managed to register her child as handicapped ….and started receiving financial assistance, compensation and other allowances.’
Initially local officials Magadan did not believe the allegations against the ‘heroic’ woman and staged a public campaign to have the boy returned to Korotkova.
Korotkova falsely claimed around £50,000 in state handouts for a total of seven years. She must pay it back in full and hand over more than £8,000 in ‘moral damages’ to the child
Kremlin children’s ombudsman Anna Kuznetsova stepped in to prevent this happening.
Korotkova – who denied her guilt – was seen in a video as she was sentenced.
She was convicted of the ‘intentional infliction of a grave injury, to a minor (leaving him) in a helpless state’.
Her actions were conducted with ‘with special cruelty’ and amounted to ‘torture’.
She was found guilty of failing to carry out her foster mother duties raising the child and of swindling the state out of benefit cash.
She was reported to have ‘frittered’ the cash on ‘luxuries’.
The boy is now being cared for permanently by Svetlana Suleimanova, a psychologist who treated him immediately he was freed from his life of hell with Korotkova and flown 3,800 miles to Moscow.