A man and woman found guilty of starving their seven-year-old daughter to death have admitted to failing their little girl.
Their autistic daughter, known only as Ebony, was a mere 106cm tall and weighed just nine kilograms when she died in squalid conditions at the family's Hawks Nest home, north of Newcastle, in November 2007.
At the time she died, her face resembled skin stretched over a skull and she reeked of urine and faeces, the NSW Supreme Court was told.
Several doctors testified she suffered from the most severe case of malnutrition they had ever seen.
After a five-week trial and a week of deliberations, the girl's 35-year-old mother was found guilty of her murder, and her 48-year-old father was convicted of manslaughter.
At their joint sentencing hearing at NSW Supreme Court in Newcastle on Wednesday, the mother admitted she had "failed miserably" in her care for her daughter.
"Do you feel responsible for the death?" she was asked by her barrister Dennis Stewart.
"Mostly yes, because I had a responsibility of care," she replied.
"How do you feel about your failure to do what was required for her?" the lawyer asked.
"I failed miserably," she responded.
Her husband's psychologist also gave evidence that the father had shown "genuine" signs of contrition and remorse during their interview.
Dr Anthony Nicholas said the man had been "off his face on drugs" in the weeks leading up to his daughter's death.
"He said the arrangement with his wife was that she looked after (Ebony) and his job was to look after the other girls," he told the court.
"That's when he came back and said: 'I just failed her, didn't I? I just failed her as a father'."
As proceedings began, a victim impact statement from one of Ebony's sisters was read to the court by a family representative.
In it, the sister, who cannot be named for legal reasons, said she had felt angry, fearful and depressed after Ebony's death.
"I was angry with everyone and it did not matter if they were involved or not," she said.
"(I felt) sadness, anxiety and fear ... what would become of my sisters and me in the future?"
The girl said she regretted not being able to do anything to help save her "happy, smiling" sister who loved McDonald's.
"I loved my sister very much - I still do to this very day, and always will. But how she died will never leave my memory," she said.
"I will always remember what happened and that is the most painful thing - to live with knowing that your younger sister has died and you could not do anything to stop it."
The mother also accused her "possessive, controlling, violent" husband of forcing her into prostitution by organising for men to come to the family home to spank her while she was dressed in a school uniform and on some occasions to have sex.
But under cross-examination, crown prosecutor Peter Barnett accused her of "humbugging" the court.
"It was never your fault - it was always someone else's, wasn't it?" Mr Barnett said.
"And now you're in a corner saying: 'I'm going to dump everything on my partner ... and I will make myself out to be this poor defenceless woman'."
The woman responded: "No - that was the life I went through with him."
The sentencing hearing before Justice Robert Allan Hulme continues.
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