However, Mr Jones KC added: “Sara had not just been beaten up. Her treatment, certainly in the last few weeks of her life, had been appalling and brutal.”
Jurors also heard that police found Sara’s body on a bottom bunkbed under covers as if she was asleep.
“But she was not asleep, she was dead,” Mr Jones KC told the jury.
The three defendants, who lived with Sara before her death in August last year, are also charged with causing or allowing the death of a child, which they deny.
The prosecution said it was “inconceivable” that any of the adults could have carried out the abuse “without the complicity, participation, assistance and encouragement of the others”.
“None of them ever reported Sara’s abuse to any outside agency, who could have intervened,” Mr Jones KC added.
The trial continues.
