Abiyah Yasharahyalah: Vegan parents who starved son to death learn their fate

A vegan couple were jailed for a total of 44 years on Thursday after their obsession with “clean eating” led to the death of their severely malnourished and “skeletal” toddler.

Tai and Naiyahmi Yasharahyalah “played a part in starving” three-year-old Abiyah, who was buried in their garden after the pair established a “kingdom” in which they lived under their own religion and laws.

Jurors heard the defendants, both degree-educated, lived in squalor after turning their back on society.

Driven by a distrust of big pharma, they declared themselves to be living by the Law of Yasharahyalah and divorced themselves from state support – eschewing all benefits, medical and dental care and surviving on only nuts, fruits and seeds.

Abiyah was hidden away and the court heard that his death in January 2020 went unnoticed, and wasn’t registered.

Officials discovered the boy had died almost three years later, after police were asked to conduct a welfare check on the couple.

Tai, the 42-year-old son of a former Nigerian government official, was jailed for 24-and-a-half years at Coventry Crown Court, while 43-year-old Naiyahmi received a 19-and-a-half-year sentence.

Both were convicted last week of causing the death of Abiyah, child cruelty and perverting the course of justice, in what was described as “breathtaking” child neglect.

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 judge told them: “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.

“It is difficult to imagine a worse case of neglect.”

He said the defendants had neglected Abiyah “for misplaced ideological reasons” – a mixture of conspiracy theories about the state and the medical establishment along with spiritual beliefs from the Igbo people of Nigeria, where Tai had traced his ancestry.