Kaylea Titford’s neglect was appalling- yet media focused on her weight

Trigger warning: this piece contains descriptions of death of a disabled person by neglect and fatphobia in the media surrounding the Kaylea Titford case. Please take care and only read if you feel able.

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When I first read about the death of Kaylea Titford, I was shocked: both by the deep neglect she experienced—culminating in her passing at her home in Wales in October 2020, aged just 16—and at how misleading the headlines were.

“Parents killed girl by letting her become obese” Announced BBC News, The Evening standard declared “Father of obese teenager found guilty of manslaughter by gross negligence.” 

Kaylea was a disabled girl born with spina bifida and hydrocephalus who lived and died in appalling conditions because her parents—enabled by a society that consistently devalues disabled lives—chose not to prioritise her care. 

Yet the mainstream media’s primary concern seemed to be that Kaylea was ‘obese’. 

Kaylea was once an enthusiastic wheelchair basketball player who attended a mainstream school. But during the first lockdown of 2020, it seems like her parents gave up on helping their young daughter lead a dignified and independent life.

Kaylea was confined to her bed between March and October 2020. Her hoist was left to gather cobwebs; her too-small wheelchair was used as a dumping ground for clutter. 

When Kaylea’s mother finally sought medical attention for her, months into lockdown, she was dead. Paramedics found Kaylea’s body covered in bed sores so badly infected that maggots were present while she was still alive. She hadn’t been washed properly in weeks.

Kaylea Titford was literally left to rot—an outrageous way to treat any child. A jury has recognised this, and her parents will be sentenced for manslaughter in March. 

Notice how I’ve managed to write up to here without describing Titford as ‘morbidly obese’, or any other scary-sounding term for ‘very fat’?

That’s because centring Kaylea’s fatness in the story of how she was neglected to death is a choice—and a problematic one. 

Having reported on anti-fat bias in the past, I’ve been struck by its pervasiveness in media coverage of Kaylea’s death. 

I’m not saying her weight was completely irrelevant. It is well known that when a person’s body carries very large amounts of fat, this can lead to health issues. Moreover, Kaylea’s weight was significant in the arguments made against her parents at trial. 

But clickbait coverage has allowed her fatness to dominate the story to the point where other important details are ignored. 

For example, a Sky News report listed Kaylea’s weight stats and her family’s favourite types of takeaway well before getting around to mentioning that she hadn’t been properly washed in weeks. 

To get that information, the reader would need to scroll down considerably, because it’s eleven paragraphs in—further than most readers, who rely on headlines, will read. 

Failing to deal with hygiene was clearly one of the main ways that Kaylea’s mother and father failed her. Surely, that shouldn’t be treated as an accessory detail? 

Disappointingly, The Guardian has also lent a veneer of credibility to the sensationalistic ‘killed by obesity’ angle with “Kaylea Titford’s father found guilty of killing her by letting her become obese” 

Not only did their report use a misleading headline, but it compared the case with that of Christina Corrigan, an American girl who died aged just 13 after losing mobility due to her body weight (which was over double Kaylea’s). 

The media used the case to launch a ‘debate’ about whether having a fat child should be considered ‘child abuse’. Corrigan’s mother was ultimately found guilty of child neglect.

Highlighting the ‘similarity’ of the cases risks reinforcing the idea that Kaylea’s death (and her parents’ inadequate care) was ‘about fat’. Perhaps the main similarity is that both Kaylea and Christina were both ‘obese’ girls with untreated bedsores—a skin problem that can turn deadly in people of all sizes. 

Untreated bedsores have been found in numerous cases of disabled people who died after being neglected by their carers. 

But there has been little journalistic interest in connecting what happened to Kaylea with other disabled people in the UK who have been neglected to death. To name just one example, Deborah Leitch, a young woman with Down Syndrome whose mum allowed her to die from starvation and untreated scabies in 2019.

The people who propagate this disgust often claim they are trying to help people by discouraging ‘unhealthy lifestyles’. But in practice, anti-fat stigma and prejudice can actually harm people’s health. 

In the quest for clicks, news sites have dehumanised Kaylea, depicting her as ‘obese’ first, and a person second. 

Aside from being cruel, research evidence suggests that stigmatising media coverage of ‘obesity’ does not help fat people lose weight. Its real purpose? 

To drum up outrage and prejudice—and in this context, to decontextualise Kaylea’s death from a wider trend of crimes against disabled people, fat, thin, and everywhere in between. 

Why has Kaylea’s story been so misrepresented? Why has it been divorced from this context? 

Above all, I believe the cause is a society that moralises fatness and treats fat bodies—and the lifestyle choices that are assumed to create them—with disgust. 

Kaylea Titford’s parents abused their power by withholding basic care from their daughter for months on end. 

Kaylea deserved much better in life. In death, the least that we can do for her is fight against her memory being reduced to a modern-day freakshow.

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A reminder that The Unwritten’s founder and editor Rachel Charlton-Dailey is running a campaign to expose media ableism and get everyone to report ableism to IPSO in order to show we need guidelines for reporting disability. Rachel has created a guide to complaining here.

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