A mother from Ohio whose 16-pound, barely malnourished 3-year-old daughter was saved by cops from an apartment filled in feces and infested with bugs will serve years behind bars.
The Greene County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office released a news release on Thursday, announcing that Rabyah Muballigh, 26, had been sentenced to 7 to 10 1/2 years in prison for the severe child abuse case involving her daughter. According to court records available online, Muballigh entered a plea of not guilty to counts of felonious assault and endangering children.
It was the worst example of child abuse that Greene County Prosecuting Attorney David D. Hayes has witnessed in his 20-year career.
“Muballigh is going to prison for several years, as she should,” he stated. “Her primary responsibility was to care for that child and she failed to do that and caused that child serious physical harm.”
Muballigh testified in court that she had been praying for her daughter every night for the past six months. Prosecutors claimed that Muballigh had only taken her child to the pediatrician once.
“I should have gotten help sooner so she wouldn’t have been hurt the way she was,” she stated. “I just kind of gave up. I stopped getting out of bed, I stopped showering, I stopped eating. The only time I was getting up was feeding her, but it wasn’t enough. I should have done more.”
“While not an excuse for her inaction, Rabyah was suffering from extreme mental health issues at the time she failed her duties,” Wilder stated.
Prosecutors revealed on July 17 that Corey Michael Moody, a 29-year-old biological father, had been charged on one count each of harming minors, obstructing justice, and tampering with evidence. $100,000 is the bail amount for his incarceration. On October 7, he will go on trial.
The matter was made public on January 8. Prosecutors alleged that Muballigh pretended to be a 2- or 3-year-old girl when she called 911 and informed the operator that the girl was having trouble breathing.
Approximately one o’clock in the afternoon, at Muballigh’s ground-floor apartment in the 300 block of Wallace Drive, roughly sixty miles northeast of Cincinnati, the girl was dramatically saved by officers as seen in body camera footage from the Fairborn Police Department.
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The home is seen in the footage to be covered in trash and food waste. Numerous sticky-paper fly traps are visible, almost entirely coated with dead flies. In some places, trash seems to be stacked to about six feet.
Officers discovered the youngster, who is hidden in the video, malnourished, curled up in a corner, and covered in insect bites when they opened her room’s door. As per the prosecution, she was solely donning a solid diaper.
She was on the ground, her body drenched in pee and excrement next to a mattress. There are bugs on the walls and floors that look like roaches. When the infant gasps for air, the officers initially appear to think she is dead but then express joy that she is still alive.
While they check on the victim, the officers pull the blankets off the wall that cover the windows to let in more light.
After being brought to a hospital, the girl stayed there for several weeks before being allowed to go home. She is with the adoptive family of her sister.
Muballigh was at the house at the time as well, and authorities soon discovered that she had called 911 under a false name. She was taken into custody; just as the officer leaves the house, she can be seen crying in the police video.
