The so-called ‘father’ will be released automatically in 14 years’ time, less time on remand.
Stepmother Tuston refused to even come up from the cells to hear her fate.
>Father is jailed for 21 years and his partner for a minimum of 29 years over the torture and killing of six-year-old Arthur Labinjo-Hughes
This case has been one of the toughest tests to my opposition to capital punishment. Beyond being evil, I can’t see how this could happen and am sceptical as to whether somene like this can be rehabilitated.
Fortunately the decision isn’t in the hands of angry, irrational people like myself, but in a complex and sometimes unfeeling bureaucracy.
I only found out about this case as they discussed it on the radio. It’s broken my heart.
How horribly cruel to systematically remove everything he loved and needed. Do yourself a favour and avoid the audio if you haven’t heard it.
Utter monsters. To even pretend that his injuries and death was self inflicted shows her outright stupidity.
29 and 21 years is like a 100 years when you’re a child killer.
I hope they have a really terrible time.
After seeing the video of him, no punishment is fit enough for these two wastes of oxygen.
>On 16th June, less than three months after moving in, he was rushed into hospital. He
had sustained a devastating and fatal head injury. His body was covered in bruises.
There were 130 in total at the time of his death: a number described by Dr Dixon, a
consultant paediatrician specialising in child protection, as being “staggering”. Many
of them were on areas of his body where they could not have been caused accidentally.
On the last occasion on which Arthur was seen by his grandmother in April he again
had a number of deep bruises to his back.
> I have no doubt that he was regularly beaten
by both of you. You must each have been aware what the other was doing. Tustin, you
would have been in the house when Hughes behaved in this way. Hughes, you would
have seen the marks on Arthur when he undressed in front of you. You Hughes, I am
sure, researched pressure pointing Arthur and then did it. Not in the playful way you
suggested but as an attempt to cause maximum pain with minimum injury. He was
emaciated. His ribs were visible under his skin. There was evidence that he had
sustained earlier, less serious injuries to his brain. He had been poisoned with so much
salt that the levels of sodium in his blood could not be accurately and reliably measured
by properly calibrated hospital equipment. You, Tustin had administered a very
significant bolus of salt in the hours before his death. I am sure that you had also been
poisoning him with smaller doses of salt for some time. It is the only explanation for
Arthur being heard regularly to cry out for food while rejecting the food that you
prepared for him and offered him.
> It explains why you had been restricting his access
to free water for some time and your annoyance when, on the day of Arthur’s death,
Tobias Jarman wanted to give Arthur water to slake his thirst. Arthur’s thymus was
found to be atrophied indicating that he had suffered from acute or prolonged abuse in
the period leading up to his death. The extent of that abuse became apparent during this
investigation and trial. He had been completely isolated from his extended family. He
was forced to live a solitary and lonely life within your home, including being made to
stand to attention alone in the hallway of the house for most of the day. The CCTV
recovered from your home revealed that he had been made to stand in this way for over
14 hours on 12
th June, almost 12 hours on 13th June, almost 11 hours on 14th June and
6 ½ hours on 15th June. Although no CCTV material was available for the time before
12th June, your text messages reveal that this was the pattern of Arthur’s life for many
weeks before his death. He was not allowed any friendly interaction with you or to play
with your children, Tustin, and was not allowed to return to school once his school reopened on 8th June. He was made to sleep downstairs on the hard floor without a
mattress. In the last three months of Arthur’s life he was subjected to the most
unimaginable suffering at the hands of both of you
more
>The CCTV images
of you, Tustin, rolling Arthur out of bed on the day before he died and the mental images
of you, Hughes, walking past your son who had been standing alone in the hallway for
hours in a thick onesie on one of the hottest days of the year to buy ice creams for you
and Tustin without buying one for him or of you deliberately ripping up his beloved
Birmingham City football shirt are some of those that will live with anyone who
attended this trial for a very long time. They are but examples of how you relished in
making him suffer. In your texts to one another you regularly referred to Arthur in terms
such as a cunt or a shit, or as being like Satan or Hitler.
more
> Hughes, you were out of the house when your partner did what she did to your son. But
she did it in part because of the encouragement you gave her. In the weeks preceding
his murder you made a series of graphic and chilling threats to Arthur or about him.
Threats that you were happy enough to commit to writing in the texts you sent Tustin
such as promises to “take his cunting jaw off his shoulders”, to “fill him in”, to “dash
his food off his head”, and to “end him”. Threats that could sometimes be heard by
people you hardly knew such as Tustin’s hairdresser and her partner who heard you
threaten to take Arthur’s head off his shoulders and use it as a football just hours before
he died. The threats of what you would do to Arthur were themselves an encouragement
to Tustin to use violence of her own on him. But they were also accompanied by more
direct encouragements to violence. You sent her texts telling her things such as to “take
his jaw off” and to “fucking launch the lying little fuck”. They culminated in sending
her a message the night before she killed him that she should “just end him”.
“One of the most troubling aspects of the case, he added, was that Tustin’s own two children “lived a perfectly happy life in that house” just yards from where Arthur was subjected to “unthinkable abuse”.”
This comes up a weird amount in child abuse of this nature. People who abuse just one of their children. Most child abuse cases you see are people who love their children but simply incapable of making the right choices to look after them. I can sympathise with that. Things like this I just have no fucking clue.
The poor kid. His mother in jail for killing someone these two as his guardians and then the ( hopefully) once in a lifetime lockdowns meaning some of the usual safety nets weren’t there.
Hearing the audio of him shouting “nobody loves me” would move anyone to tears.
I hope these two live in fear for every single one of their days. Sadly I doubt it.
Totally heartbreaking story, that poor wee boy, I had tears running down my face when the story was on the news yesterday
These two creatures are lower than the shit from my asshole.
Imo, the step”mother” deserves a whole life tariff. The “father”. life.
The last case which upset me this much was Daniel Pelka. Both his parents killed themselves in prison not long after being sentenced. I would lose no sleep if the same thing happened here.
Stick em in the normal wings instead of the damn protective one and the problem will be solved within a week.
I grew up in Foster Care and reading stories like this is depressing, my life wasn’t the best at times but Foster Care helped me and my sister.
However when I see cases like this I feel empty inside, this case was obvious. The system is now letting children down to the point where if they are stuck in this situation, they have no hope and frankly when you see someone who needed help even more than you and you where Fostered you end up feeling nothing but guilt. I hate this, this poor kid had no one, he felt unloved and he needed help and hurts even more to see that he never got it.
This mother had two children taken away from her already because she neglected them how did this not ring alarm bells at the start of the fucking relationship between the boy’s father and her? Where were Social Workers on keeping an eye on her?
[deleted]
I hadn’t heard this story until reading it in the Metro on the way to work this morning. I had to fight back tears. I’ve got a 5 yo child and the wanton cruelty they dealt to that poor boy is utterly unfathomable.
To add wtf is with the salt poisoning? This happened to Daniel Pelka too. Why is this common for child abusers?!
some articles have a video clip of the kid crying “no one loves me” ffs don’t watch it.
Listen to that 999 call, absolutely no emotion in her voice.
Why are the sentences concurrent? Can they not be consecutive when dealing with life sentences? Any pointers appreciated! These guys should never freely walk again.
I am not normally a violent or vindictive person but I hope these two rot in hell and every day they are on this Earth is a painful and miserable one.
Just watched the bodycam footage of Tustin when the police arrived. Crying about what that wee boy “put her through”. Fucking scum.
I hope she gets what she deserves in jail, a taste of what she did to that child. I hope it haunts her for the rest of her miserable little existence, needing to constantly look over her shoulder. And I hope every meal she eats in there is fucking piled up with salt.
Once again a child abuse case without harsh enough sentencing. So sick and tired of seeing this in the UK. Scum.
Brought me to tears reading a long-form article of what he suffered through, just unbelievably messed up. Can’t bring myself to watch the video clips of Arthur crying.
I wish nothing but the absolute worst on both of the parents, may they spend the rest of their lives living in fear of being attacked by other prisoners.
I just heard that audio of him screaming and I feel traumatised. A six year old child screaming that nobody loves him just hours before he’s murdered.
What the actual fuck.
This broke me… Grown ass man and I’ve cried like 5 times today at this. Not ashamed to admit it. We failed him.
Listening to the audio recording, I can honestly say there is no punishment that will ever be fitting for the way they made this child feel.
It’s not been mentioned in the articles over the last two days but Tustin was seen on camera carrying salt upstairs. She explained this away in court by claiming she got constant UTI’s and rubbed salt onto her genitals to help with them. – this would sting like fuck so she’s clearly a massive liar. She said it was an old wives tale. This is possibly the craziest lie in court I have ever heard of.
The video of Arthur looking so frail and miserable broke my heart. I just can’t wrap my head around being so evil as to treat a child the way those monsters did.
I hope they live a long and very miserable life in prison.
This is such an awful case, as is Star Hobson. How many more of these have happened while doors were closed in lockdown? I hope the jury are given counselling, it must have been awful discussing this in depth for weeks. They gave Arthur a minutes silence at the trial to show respect,poor child, more appreciation than he had in life.
I am beyond words over the treatment of this little lad. I don’t have children, just the overwhelming response of utter despair.
I cannot imagine hurting anyone let alone a child and certainly not in such awful ways. If only someone would have helped him sooner. Some people are just vile
Poor little boy, no one deserves that, I hope they both get it in jail. I know one thing, jailbirds do *not* like kid killers.
Baby p broke my heart forever.
I’ve really tried to avoid this, but it’s got through.
I hope they suffer.
I am not religious, but sometimes, with things like this, I hope there is a heaven for that boy to go to.
And I hope there is a hell for those people to rot in.
“Hughes’ mother, Joanne Hughes, had seen bruises on Arthur’s back, with the boy telling how Tustin “called him an ugly, horrible brat” and shoved him into the stairs.
She alerted children’s social services to the bruises in April, just weeks before his death.
But two social workers, who saw Arthur at Cranmore Road, had “no safeguarding concerns”.
This is one the worse things I have ever read. I really hope she suffers in prison. She should never be released.
I hope they spend every waking minute in prison fearing for their lives, i hope they get beaten to a pulp but not the point of death because that’s too good for either of these vile creatures. They deserve to suffer like they made Arthur suffer. I hope they never get a peaceful nights sleep ever again.
How anyone could inflict abuse on a defenceless child I have no idea. The footage of Arthur that has been released is harrowing. He was so frail and they made him that way. Going by the photos, he was such a happy and healthy child before the abuse started. Truly heartbreaking.
I don’t have children but I’ve been so upset by this I don’t think I could even put it into words. I wish with all my heart someone had intervened.
As a grown man who has heard and read just about every awful news story over the last couple of decades, the details of what happened to this little boy have shocked me more than I could ever imagined.
Maybe because I became a father myself 17 months ago that the story affects me in a way I never expected but.. knowing that audio or video of his suffering has been released just.. I can’t and I won’t watch or listen to it.
How could they have done this to him. How could his extended family, his school all have missed it?! The whole thing is just staggeringly terrible and frankly I hope the two who perpetrated it have an excruciatingly miserable time in prison.. because they deserve nothing less.
I also feel sorry for the jury and others who had to oversee this case. They will probably never get over some of what they had to watch.
Genuinely a story to shock an entire country I think.
I held it together until I read the statement from the school. He was a lovely child, and his favourite story was The Snail and the Whale.
I’ve waited until my kids an wife have gone to bed and now i’m sat on the sofa sobbing quietly.
I’ve read and heard too much about what this baby was put through to not need an outlet.
Please let there be an afterlife where he gets a chance to thrive.
I just stopped work and went down to Lidl brought flowers then went down to the house to pay my respects, being that I work around near to where poor Arthur got murdered. So upsetting seeing all the flowers and the house in person. Words can’t describe what happened to him!
Hope the pair of them suffer a miserable and painful existence for the rest of their lives. Fucking scum.
I’ve just read that in the days before his death his stepmum took him to a hairdressers (home) appointment and she made Arthur face the door for SIX HOURS and not speak to anyone.
HOW CAN YOU WATCH THAT HAPPEN IN YOUR OWN HOUSE?? What the fuck?? The more I read about this case the more angry I am.
Now I’ve got a child these types of stories seem to make you feel 100x worse.
Not even sure what kind of person could actually do this to a child. Especially one old enough to actually talk… surely a child begging for you to help triggers some kind of emotional care in all of us. These people must be mentally deranged or something
47 comments
The so-called ‘father’ will be released automatically in 14 years’ time, less time on remand.
Stepmother Tuston refused to even come up from the cells to hear her fate.
>Father is jailed for 21 years and his partner for a minimum of 29 years over the torture and killing of six-year-old Arthur Labinjo-Hughes
This case has been one of the toughest tests to my opposition to capital punishment. Beyond being evil, I can’t see how this could happen and am sceptical as to whether somene like this can be rehabilitated.
Fortunately the decision isn’t in the hands of angry, irrational people like myself, but in a complex and sometimes unfeeling bureaucracy.
I only found out about this case as they discussed it on the radio. It’s broken my heart.
How horribly cruel to systematically remove everything he loved and needed. Do yourself a favour and avoid the audio if you haven’t heard it.
Utter monsters. To even pretend that his injuries and death was self inflicted shows her outright stupidity.
[Sentencing remarks.](https://www.judiciary.uk/judgments/r-v-tustin-hughes-sentencing-remarks/)
29 and 21 years is like a 100 years when you’re a child killer.
I hope they have a really terrible time.
After seeing the video of him, no punishment is fit enough for these two wastes of oxygen.
>On 16th June, less than three months after moving in, he was rushed into hospital. He
had sustained a devastating and fatal head injury. His body was covered in bruises.
There were 130 in total at the time of his death: a number described by Dr Dixon, a
consultant paediatrician specialising in child protection, as being “staggering”. Many
of them were on areas of his body where they could not have been caused accidentally.
On the last occasion on which Arthur was seen by his grandmother in April he again
had a number of deep bruises to his back.
> I have no doubt that he was regularly beaten
by both of you. You must each have been aware what the other was doing. Tustin, you
would have been in the house when Hughes behaved in this way. Hughes, you would
have seen the marks on Arthur when he undressed in front of you. You Hughes, I am
sure, researched pressure pointing Arthur and then did it. Not in the playful way you
suggested but as an attempt to cause maximum pain with minimum injury. He was
emaciated. His ribs were visible under his skin. There was evidence that he had
sustained earlier, less serious injuries to his brain. He had been poisoned with so much
salt that the levels of sodium in his blood could not be accurately and reliably measured
by properly calibrated hospital equipment. You, Tustin had administered a very
significant bolus of salt in the hours before his death. I am sure that you had also been
poisoning him with smaller doses of salt for some time. It is the only explanation for
Arthur being heard regularly to cry out for food while rejecting the food that you
prepared for him and offered him.
> It explains why you had been restricting his access
to free water for some time and your annoyance when, on the day of Arthur’s death,
Tobias Jarman wanted to give Arthur water to slake his thirst. Arthur’s thymus was
found to be atrophied indicating that he had suffered from acute or prolonged abuse in
the period leading up to his death. The extent of that abuse became apparent during this
investigation and trial. He had been completely isolated from his extended family. He
was forced to live a solitary and lonely life within your home, including being made to
stand to attention alone in the hallway of the house for most of the day. The CCTV
recovered from your home revealed that he had been made to stand in this way for over
14 hours on 12
th June, almost 12 hours on 13th June, almost 11 hours on 14th June and
6 ½ hours on 15th June. Although no CCTV material was available for the time before
12th June, your text messages reveal that this was the pattern of Arthur’s life for many
weeks before his death. He was not allowed any friendly interaction with you or to play
with your children, Tustin, and was not allowed to return to school once his school reopened on 8th June. He was made to sleep downstairs on the hard floor without a
mattress. In the last three months of Arthur’s life he was subjected to the most
unimaginable suffering at the hands of both of you
more
>The CCTV images
of you, Tustin, rolling Arthur out of bed on the day before he died and the mental images
of you, Hughes, walking past your son who had been standing alone in the hallway for
hours in a thick onesie on one of the hottest days of the year to buy ice creams for you
and Tustin without buying one for him or of you deliberately ripping up his beloved
Birmingham City football shirt are some of those that will live with anyone who
attended this trial for a very long time. They are but examples of how you relished in
making him suffer. In your texts to one another you regularly referred to Arthur in terms
such as a cunt or a shit, or as being like Satan or Hitler.
more
> Hughes, you were out of the house when your partner did what she did to your son. But
she did it in part because of the encouragement you gave her. In the weeks preceding
his murder you made a series of graphic and chilling threats to Arthur or about him.
Threats that you were happy enough to commit to writing in the texts you sent Tustin
such as promises to “take his cunting jaw off his shoulders”, to “fill him in”, to “dash
his food off his head”, and to “end him”. Threats that could sometimes be heard by
people you hardly knew such as Tustin’s hairdresser and her partner who heard you
threaten to take Arthur’s head off his shoulders and use it as a football just hours before
he died. The threats of what you would do to Arthur were themselves an encouragement
to Tustin to use violence of her own on him. But they were also accompanied by more
direct encouragements to violence. You sent her texts telling her things such as to “take
his jaw off” and to “fucking launch the lying little fuck”. They culminated in sending
her a message the night before she killed him that she should “just end him”.
“One of the most troubling aspects of the case, he added, was that Tustin’s own two children “lived a perfectly happy life in that house” just yards from where Arthur was subjected to “unthinkable abuse”.”
This comes up a weird amount in child abuse of this nature. People who abuse just one of their children. Most child abuse cases you see are people who love their children but simply incapable of making the right choices to look after them. I can sympathise with that. Things like this I just have no fucking clue.
The poor kid. His mother in jail for killing someone these two as his guardians and then the ( hopefully) once in a lifetime lockdowns meaning some of the usual safety nets weren’t there.
Hearing the audio of him shouting “nobody loves me” would move anyone to tears.
I hope these two live in fear for every single one of their days. Sadly I doubt it.
Totally heartbreaking story, that poor wee boy, I had tears running down my face when the story was on the news yesterday
These two creatures are lower than the shit from my asshole.
Imo, the step”mother” deserves a whole life tariff. The “father”. life.
The last case which upset me this much was Daniel Pelka. Both his parents killed themselves in prison not long after being sentenced. I would lose no sleep if the same thing happened here.
Stick em in the normal wings instead of the damn protective one and the problem will be solved within a week.
I grew up in Foster Care and reading stories like this is depressing, my life wasn’t the best at times but Foster Care helped me and my sister.
However when I see cases like this I feel empty inside, this case was obvious. The system is now letting children down to the point where if they are stuck in this situation, they have no hope and frankly when you see someone who needed help even more than you and you where Fostered you end up feeling nothing but guilt. I hate this, this poor kid had no one, he felt unloved and he needed help and hurts even more to see that he never got it.
This mother had two children taken away from her already because she neglected them how did this not ring alarm bells at the start of the fucking relationship between the boy’s father and her? Where were Social Workers on keeping an eye on her?
[deleted]
I hadn’t heard this story until reading it in the Metro on the way to work this morning. I had to fight back tears. I’ve got a 5 yo child and the wanton cruelty they dealt to that poor boy is utterly unfathomable.
To add wtf is with the salt poisoning? This happened to Daniel Pelka too. Why is this common for child abusers?!
some articles have a video clip of the kid crying “no one loves me” ffs don’t watch it.
Listen to that 999 call, absolutely no emotion in her voice.
Why are the sentences concurrent? Can they not be consecutive when dealing with life sentences? Any pointers appreciated! These guys should never freely walk again.
I am not normally a violent or vindictive person but I hope these two rot in hell and every day they are on this Earth is a painful and miserable one.
Just watched the bodycam footage of Tustin when the police arrived. Crying about what that wee boy “put her through”. Fucking scum.
I hope she gets what she deserves in jail, a taste of what she did to that child. I hope it haunts her for the rest of her miserable little existence, needing to constantly look over her shoulder. And I hope every meal she eats in there is fucking piled up with salt.
Once again a child abuse case without harsh enough sentencing. So sick and tired of seeing this in the UK. Scum.
Brought me to tears reading a long-form article of what he suffered through, just unbelievably messed up. Can’t bring myself to watch the video clips of Arthur crying.
I wish nothing but the absolute worst on both of the parents, may they spend the rest of their lives living in fear of being attacked by other prisoners.
I just heard that audio of him screaming and I feel traumatised. A six year old child screaming that nobody loves him just hours before he’s murdered.
What the actual fuck.
This broke me… Grown ass man and I’ve cried like 5 times today at this. Not ashamed to admit it. We failed him.
Listening to the audio recording, I can honestly say there is no punishment that will ever be fitting for the way they made this child feel.
It’s not been mentioned in the articles over the last two days but Tustin was seen on camera carrying salt upstairs. She explained this away in court by claiming she got constant UTI’s and rubbed salt onto her genitals to help with them. – this would sting like fuck so she’s clearly a massive liar. She said it was an old wives tale. This is possibly the craziest lie in court I have ever heard of.
The video of Arthur looking so frail and miserable broke my heart. I just can’t wrap my head around being so evil as to treat a child the way those monsters did.
I hope they live a long and very miserable life in prison.
This is such an awful case, as is Star Hobson. How many more of these have happened while doors were closed in lockdown? I hope the jury are given counselling, it must have been awful discussing this in depth for weeks. They gave Arthur a minutes silence at the trial to show respect,poor child, more appreciation than he had in life.
I am beyond words over the treatment of this little lad. I don’t have children, just the overwhelming response of utter despair.
I cannot imagine hurting anyone let alone a child and certainly not in such awful ways. If only someone would have helped him sooner. Some people are just vile
Poor little boy, no one deserves that, I hope they both get it in jail. I know one thing, jailbirds do *not* like kid killers.
Baby p broke my heart forever.
I’ve really tried to avoid this, but it’s got through.
I hope they suffer.
I am not religious, but sometimes, with things like this, I hope there is a heaven for that boy to go to.
And I hope there is a hell for those people to rot in.
“Hughes’ mother, Joanne Hughes, had seen bruises on Arthur’s back, with the boy telling how Tustin “called him an ugly, horrible brat” and shoved him into the stairs.
She alerted children’s social services to the bruises in April, just weeks before his death.
But two social workers, who saw Arthur at Cranmore Road, had “no safeguarding concerns”.
This is one the worse things I have ever read. I really hope she suffers in prison. She should never be released.
I hope they spend every waking minute in prison fearing for their lives, i hope they get beaten to a pulp but not the point of death because that’s too good for either of these vile creatures. They deserve to suffer like they made Arthur suffer. I hope they never get a peaceful nights sleep ever again.
How anyone could inflict abuse on a defenceless child I have no idea. The footage of Arthur that has been released is harrowing. He was so frail and they made him that way. Going by the photos, he was such a happy and healthy child before the abuse started. Truly heartbreaking.
I don’t have children but I’ve been so upset by this I don’t think I could even put it into words. I wish with all my heart someone had intervened.
As a grown man who has heard and read just about every awful news story over the last couple of decades, the details of what happened to this little boy have shocked me more than I could ever imagined.
Maybe because I became a father myself 17 months ago that the story affects me in a way I never expected but.. knowing that audio or video of his suffering has been released just.. I can’t and I won’t watch or listen to it.
How could they have done this to him. How could his extended family, his school all have missed it?! The whole thing is just staggeringly terrible and frankly I hope the two who perpetrated it have an excruciatingly miserable time in prison.. because they deserve nothing less.
I also feel sorry for the jury and others who had to oversee this case. They will probably never get over some of what they had to watch.
Genuinely a story to shock an entire country I think.
I held it together until I read the statement from the school. He was a lovely child, and his favourite story was The Snail and the Whale.
I’ve waited until my kids an wife have gone to bed and now i’m sat on the sofa sobbing quietly.
I’ve read and heard too much about what this baby was put through to not need an outlet.
Please let there be an afterlife where he gets a chance to thrive.
I just stopped work and went down to Lidl brought flowers then went down to the house to pay my respects, being that I work around near to where poor Arthur got murdered. So upsetting seeing all the flowers and the house in person. Words can’t describe what happened to him!
Hope the pair of them suffer a miserable and painful existence for the rest of their lives. Fucking scum.
I’ve just read that in the days before his death his stepmum took him to a hairdressers (home) appointment and she made Arthur face the door for SIX HOURS and not speak to anyone.
HOW CAN YOU WATCH THAT HAPPEN IN YOUR OWN HOUSE?? What the fuck?? The more I read about this case the more angry I am.
Now I’ve got a child these types of stories seem to make you feel 100x worse.
Not even sure what kind of person could actually do this to a child. Especially one old enough to actually talk… surely a child begging for you to help triggers some kind of emotional care in all of us. These people must be mentally deranged or something
I hope their souls are forever tormented.
Absolute worst of humanity.