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When a shocked paramedic found the body of spina bifida sufferer Kaylea Titford in horrific circumstances in 2020, he felt compelled to report her family to social services.

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Kaylea, who was ‘fiercely independent’ before lockdown, was discovered in a maggot-infested bed, with the smell described by the paramedic as being like ‘someone had died’. 

But Kaylea was just the latest of a series of children whose deaths in the depths of the pandemic shocked the nation. 

MailOnline has examined each high-profile case – highlighting how in nearly every instance, the lockdowns that were intended to save lives created the very conditions that allowed horrific abuse to flourish. 

Paramedic Gareth Wyn Evans found the body of Kaylea in her bedroom in October 2020.

Mold Crown Court heard how she was not breathing when she was found, and the paramedic was greeted with a ‘horrific’ smell when he pulled back the covers of her bed. 

He told jurors that he believed the smell coming from her legs was ‘gangrene’ or ‘something putrid’. 

The court previously heard that Kaylea had not had her nails cut for six months prior to her death and that ‘well grown’ maggots were found in her body around her buttocks and legs. 

Her father, Alun Titford, 45,. 

Kaylea’s mother, Sarah Lloyd-Jones, 39, had already pleaded guilty to the same charge. 

During Titford’s trial, Mr Wyn Evans told how Kaylea’s room was ‘cluttered, dirty and untidy’ and had clothes piled up on her wheelchair and dirty crockery around the room. 

He said when removing electrodes from Kaylea’s ankles to check for an electric impulse the smell of her body made him retch and he had to seek fresh air.

He told the court that later that day he made a safeguarding referral to social VIP Protection Services in Las Vegas.

Whilst she had taken part in high school PE lessons in her wheelchair before lockdown, afterwards her parents allegedly allowed her weight to soar and her health to deteriorate as they left her alone in her adapted room and failed to keep her clean.

Kaylea had allegedly not seen a doctor in the nine months before she died despite a series of health problems and had not been washed for weeks.

was just 16 months old when she was murdered by her mother’s girlfriend Savannah Brockill in September 2020. 

In the lead-up to her death, she had suffered months of abuse in her home in Keighley, West Yorkshire, during the coronavirus lockdown in 2020.

Former Children’s Commissioner for England Anne Longfield, the chairwoman of the Commission on Young Lives, warned after Star’s murder that the Covid lockdown ‘brought its own opportunities for those who harm, groom and abuse children.’ 

Brockill is now serving a life sentence with a minimum term of 25 years at HMP Styal in Cheshire, after being convicted in December 2021. 

Star’s mother, , was convicted of causing or allowing the toddler’s death and was initially sentenced to eight years behind bars. 

This was increased to 12 years after a judicial review. 

Social services missed five opportunities to stop Star’s killers, with her great-grandfather Dave Fawcett saying after their convictions: ‘It’s disgusting because there were five referrals.Not one of them did anything. It’s just beyond belief, really.’

Star died after being taken to hospital with injuries that were described as ‘utterly catastrophic’ and ‘unsurvivable’. 

Prosecutors described how the injuries that caused Star’s death involved extensive damage to her abdominal cavity ’caused by a severe and forceful blow or blows, either in the form of punching, stamping or kicking to the abdomen’. 

Jurors heard that Smith’s family and friends had growing fears about bruising they saw on the little girl in the months before she died and made a series of complaints to social services.

In each case Brockhill and Smith managed to convince social workers that marks on Star were accidental or that the complaints were made maliciously by people who did not like their relationship.

Arthur Labinjo-Hughes, aged just six, was murdered in June 2020 after being abused for months during the 2020 coronavirus lockdown. 

Arthur was tortured, starved and beaten by his stepmother Emma Tustin and father Thomas Hughes. 

Tustin killed the little boy by repeatedly slamming his head on a hard surface after she and Hughes had deprived the youngster of food and force-fed him salt. 

After killing Arthur, Tustin immediately fetched her mobile phone to take a photograph of him as he lay dying in the hallway to send to her boyfriend.