A couple who were paid £7,000 a month in benefits left eight children living in a filthy house crammed with 35 dogs. 

Police discovered the children at the home of Christopher Bennett and Gemma Brogan after they were called to a domestic incident at the address in Eastbourne, East Sussex, in June 2021.

Officers who arrived at the scene spoke to Bennett through an open bathroom window, before entering the property to find a seven-year-old covered in animal faeces sitting near a dead dog, Lewes Crown Court heard.

The court was shown police bodycam footage of officers using wooden boards to prevent the 35 live dogs escaping from the house as they rescued the child.

All eight children, who are now aged between four and 18, were immediately taken into emergency protection.

In what was described as a “particularly dreadful example of child neglect”, the youngest children were found to be pale and underweight, could not sit at a table and were unable to use a knife and fork. 

Children’s services had to teach one child what shampoo and conditioner were and how to wash herself, while matted clumps of hair had been cut off one child who required a number of baths before she was clean.

One child was unsteady on her feet and had poor social skills, while another could neither read nor write. All the children had rotten teeth. One child had to have a general anaesthetic so a dentist could remove 13 teeth.

The Home Office or Ministry of Justice must intervene so that these sub-human child-abusers NEVER see the outside of a jail cell again.