A vegan couple who starved their three-year-old son to death oversaw the worst “case of neglect” a court had ever seen.
Tai and Naiyahmi Yasharahyalah, aged 42 and 43, showed no obvious emotion in the dock as a High Court judge said they had both “played a part in starving” toddler Abiyah.
The judge, sitting at Coventry Crown Court, sentenced Tai to 24-and-a-half years and Naiyahmi, who appeared in court wearing a white fur-style coat, to 19-and-a-half years.
Mr Justice Wall said the fact the couple had taken no photographs of the boy in the last four months of his life was “a clear sign that you realised by then how sick he was”.
The couple were sentenced on Thursday a week after they were found guilty of perverting the course of justice, causing or allowing the death of a child, and “breathtaking” child neglect.
A two-month trial was told that Abiyah died in early 2020 from a respiratory illness, with a more than minimal cause of his death being severe malnourishment which led to rickets, anaemia and stunted growth.
Abiyah was born to parents whose beliefs meant they ignored his health needs, the court heard – West Midlands Police/PA
Jurors also heard London-born Tai, a medical genetics graduate who also used the first name Tai-Zamarai, and former shop worker Naiyahmi shunned mainstream society.
They left Abiyah’s body buried at their property in Handsworth, Birmingham, when they were evicted in March 2022.
Passing sentence on the couple, Mr Justice Wall said: “Abiyah died as a result of your wilful neglect of him.
“He was severely stunted in his growth – at almost four years of age he was buried in the clothes of an 18-month-old.
“I accept that there was no deliberate infliction of physical injury by either of you.”
But the judge added: “It is difficult to imagine a worse case of neglect than that which the court has encountered in this case.”
Although the couple had enjoyed the benefits of the NHS during the first 30 years of their own lives, the judge said, they had “denied this advantage to Abiyah for misplaced ideological reasons”.
The couple were living in a caravan in Somerset in 2022 when they were arrested – West Midlands Police/PA
“I am sure each of you played a part in starving him and failing to get medical care for him when the need for it was obvious to you.”
The couple’s trial was told that instead of contacting the NHS, the couple – who told police they had renounced British citizenship and had an “off-grid” existence – tried to treat their son’s final illness with garlic and ginger.
Jurors heard that Tai introduced himself to his future wife as the “King” of the Kingdom of Yasharahyalah when the couple first met in the street while he was busking.
The couple got married at a register office in September 2015 and “invented” a belief system featuring aspects of Igbo culture that Tai, who grew up in both Nigeria and Peckham in south-east London, adapted to form a legal system he called “slick law”.
The court heard that they lived off the generosity of others, occupying a shipping container and then a caravan in Somerset.