After being given 13 years in prison for fatally drugging a little girl, a English man gave quite a shrug in court. John Rytting and the child’s mother, Michala Pyke, gave 4-year-old Poppy Widdison diazepam, heroin, methadone, and ketamine for at least six months before she suffered from cardiac arrest. The two gave the child drugs so that she wouldnt disturb them while having sex.

Kayy: Instagram || Twitter

Prosecutor David Gordon showed a text in which Pyke spoke on giving the little girl “blue Smartie” (code for diazepam) to put her to sleep. Upon raiding the home after the little girl’s death, police found 700 diazepam and 300 temazepam tablets. The man claims he bought them so that he could sell them on the black market. When given a toxicology test, it showed Poppy had “significant amounts” of heroin and methadone in her system before death. Rytting’s attorney, Timothy Roberts, insisted his client was not fully responsible for the death of the 4-year-old. Roberts says,

“Mr Rytting had been in [Poppy’s] life for about six weeks and what can be agreed is that he only had partial responsibility for care of her,”

This statement clearly did no justice as the judge still gave the couple 13 years in prison. Poppy’s biological father, Brendan Widdison, spoke on the case saying,

“We as a family could not contact Michala in the last few weeks before Poppy’s death. However, if we had known…the concerns of the social care, we might have acted differently as a family.”

Source: Complex