A mother jailed for more than 10 years for subjecting her disabled daughter to a campaign of systematic cruelty is five-and-a-half months pregnant, it has been reported.
Kimberly Harte, 23, has just started serving an 11-and-a-half year prison sentence after being convicted of torturing the four-year-old, who suffers from cerebral palsy.
Harte, who is now in Holloway Prison, will be taken to an NHS hospital under escort to give birth but the baby will be taken away from her immediately, The Sun newspaper said.
Social services will not allow her to live with the baby in a special prison mother and baby unit because of her crimes and will consider fostering or adoption instead, the paper claimed.
Harte was convicted last Thursday alongside her partner Samuel Duncan, 27, of subjecting her own daughter to a catalogue of "revolting cruelty".
The four-year-old had scalding water poured on her hands and hair ripped from her scalp. She was also locked naked in a toilet every night, repeatedly kicked in the groin and even forced to eat her own faeces.
When Duncan was arrested on suspicion of the abuse, Harte apparently began seeing another man who fell for her claims that her former boyfriend was entirely to blame.
Only she and her new boyfriend were aware of the pregnancy until a prison official at Holloway noticed she had a bump, The Sun said.
A prison source told the paper: "The official asked her if she was pregnant and she just nodded. It was as though it hadn't dawned on her that she might have mentioned her condition.
"In one way it is such a relief that this unborn baby won't suffer the horrors her poor sister was forced to endure."
