“How could all these good people sit by and do nothing?” Parents fed starving 6-year-old boy "hot dog" smoothies.

“How could all these good people sit by and do nothing?”

It was the question asked by the prosecutor.

How could all these teachers, neighbours, coaches and even strangers who noticed the starving child just watch this go on?

The lawyer for the parents – parents accused of starving and beating their six-year-old, of forcing the boy to eat only “hot dog smoothies” until his bones protruded through his skin and his stomach distended, bulbous and tight – said they “were parenting the best that they could.”

The boy was fed them twice a day and if he did not drink them, he got nothing else. Via IStock.

“The blenders are terrible,” the defence lawyer told the jury “They’re horrible. But they are food.”

The “blenders” she is referring to was the only food fed to a six-year-old boy by his father, Christopher Sefton, 31  and Sefton’s fiancee, Lori Lloyd, 31 from a town near Seattle in the US called Auburn.

“Shakes”, the boy later told police his father mashed together with bread, carrots, hot dogs, water and vegetable oil and then given to the boy to drink reports Q13Fox news.

"They were using food to torture him," prosecutor Cecelia Gregson told Seattlepi.com. "It has the added benefit of trying to kill him, but it was a very effective form of torture."

Christopher Sefton, 31 and Sefton’s fiancee, Lori Lloyd, 31 via Fox13.

Sefton and Lloyd, who also had two other children, were accused of convicted of assault and criminal mistreatment and also of mistreating their two other children.

School teachers had become so concerned with the boy’s weight loss that, after finding him rifling through the school rubbish bins eating discarded scraps they began feeding him extra food at school, creating a “share basket” so the boy could be fed and they began to weigh him.

Court documents show that school officials called child services dozens of times without getting any action.

The boy’s father though didn’t like the school interfering and enraged he claimed he was being discriminated against because he was a man raising his child.

He told a nurse at the school that the boy was a “demon” and he would sue the school district if workers didn’t stop feeding his son.

Police were called to the boy's school. Via Fox 13.

In March 2014, police were called to Chinook Elementary School after the boy, turned up at school with a split lip and bruises.

He told officers that his father “hit me in the mouth” because he had set food on the car seat to tie his shoelaces.

When asked what was the last time before that his father had beaten him he replied:

“This morning before school” because he had wet the bed. He said his dad “got really mad,” pulled off his pajamas and spanked him, then threw him into a cold shower.

Sefton’s lawyer said that the boy’s father blended the boy’s food out of concern for him. Via Fox 13.

The boy, referred to in court documents as “KS” was transported to the emergency department of Seattle Children’s Hospital, where medical personnel noticed bruises and lesions consistent with possible burns as well as signs that he was malnourished.

Doctors found signs of starvation  - the boy’s abdomen was swollen, that his rib cage was flared and that the skin around his stomach was thinning.

“During this visit to Children’s Hospital, KS disclosed that he is only fed a blended drink in the morning and for dinner,” according to the court documents. “He also explained that he often does not like to drink the ‘shake,’ but that if he refuses, he receives no other food.”

Sefton told police that he started giving him hot-dog shakes for breakfast and dinner because the boy was intentionally choking on solid food.

It was deliberate he said. The boy was fed them twice a day and if he did not drink them, he got nothing else.

“There was no love in this kid’s life,” senior deputy prosecutor Cecelia Gregson said during the trial.

“There was no love in this kid’s life,” senior deputy prosecutor Cecelia Gregson said during the trial. Via IStock.

She said the boy was forced to exercise as punishment, forced to do push-ups with a pack filled with canned food strapped to his back.

A waitress told the court that she once witnessed the family out to dinner where she saw the boy sit alone, drinking just water while the rest of the family feasted on an all-you-can-eat buffet.

But Joseph Richards, Sefton’s lawyer said that the boy’s father blended the boy’s food out of concern for him.

“Mr. Sefton didn’t keep food from” his son “He chose what he got to eat.”

Lloyd’s attorney, Jennifer Anne Cruz, argued in court that even if the boy’s food was blended, it was still food.

“Lori and Chris were parenting the best that they could,” she said.

Lloyd and Sefton were charged with first-degree assault of a child, second-degree assault of a child, first-degree criminal mistreatment and unlawful imprisonment. Sefton has also been charged with first-degree child rape, as well as two counts of fourth-degree assault related to allegations of sexual abuse.

Last week the judge sentenced them to 20 years in prison.

The prosecutor Cecelia Gregson said Sefton and Lloyd’s mistreatment of the little boy was part of a deliberately cruel pattern of abuse perpetrated against a child who couldn’t defend himself.

“Judge Cayce held that to give the standard range would be to ignore the jury’s imposition of multiple aggravating factors and would not result in a fair or just sentence,” Gregson said

“He found that 20 years was warranted in this case because it was exceptional in every way.”