By Lucy Caulkett-
A British woman from Northamptonshire mother has been jailed for 2 years and 8 months after encouraging her teenage daughter to take drugs and leaving her young son alone for three days while on a ‘bender’.
The irresponsible mum left her 14-year-old daughter and seven-year-old son alone at her home in a Northamptonshire village for three days.
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While away from her children, she took cocaine, cannabis and other drugs at her partner’s home in Daventry – where the teenager had been encouraged to take drugs too.
The 34-year-old woman’s name has been withheld for legal reasons after being jailed at Northampton Crown Court. She deserved to be exposed, but had her identity protected for the sake of her children. All those present in court were told that the woman’s identification cannot be revealed on any public platform.
”The fact her children were under age meant they had to be protected from the added shame of having their mother identified to the public”, Northamptonshire police told The Eye Of Media.Com.
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”The judge would have considered the fact that children like these are vulnerable, and identifying their mother would be damaging for their mental health”, a police representative said.
Northampton Crown Court heard the woman had herself been exposed to class A drugs as a child and she had now done the same to her own daughter.
After being collected by police, the teenager told them she had struggled to feed her brother as they relied on ‘c**p’ as well as strawberries, chocolate and frozen food.
Sinjin Bulbring, prosecuting, said the mum was involved in an altercation with two other women outside Daventry police station on September 18, 2019.
She had been found half-dressed and wearing one slipper outside Wetherspoons, saying she had ‘done something terrible which everyone would hate her for’.
“She(the teenager) suffered with panic attacks and nervous breakdowns, she said her mother had ruined her life,” Mr Bulbring told the court.
“She said she was happy her brother hadn’t gone through what she had but he had been through so much for his age.
“She wasn’t how he felt as he didn’t express his feelings but it probably had affected him although she was doing her best to keep him out of the way.”
The teenage girl said she, her mother and her partner had taken drugs at their house four days earlier before the adults left, saying the mum would return the next morning to take her son to school.
She never showed up so the teenager tried to take him but they missed the bus – they rang their mother’s partner who paid for a taxi to take the boy to school and the teenager and her boyfriend to his flat.
There the mother was drunk but she took some more cannabis and later left to pick up her son from school and left them at home for three days until the police arrived.
The irresponsible mother denied allowing her daughter to take drugs when interviewed by police but pleaded guilty to five counts of child cruelty at Northampton Magistrates’ Court on May 21.
Judge Lucking told her: “You came to the attention of police as you had gone to the police station in a half-dressed and hysterical state and you were clearly under the influence of drugs.
“You had been on, and please excuse the phrase, a three-day bender with your friend and then-partner who supplied the drugs.
“You said you had done something terrible and you there summed up precisely what you had done.”
The children were taken into police protection after their mother’s arrest and have been living with family ever since.
The partner, whose identity was also withheld due to her connection to the children’s mother, was sentenced to four months in prison, suspended for two years, and told to pay £240 after pleading guilty to possessing class A, B and C drugs.
The court heard how he had turned his life around since his arrest, and was now clean of cocaine, and the class C drugs he was taking had been prescribed to him to help with his mental health issues. No evidence he is now cocaine free was provided to the court.
Such claims of transformation are often used by barristers to mitigate the seriousness of the offence.
This publication has recommended that Northampshire Police work with the school the girl attends to encourage children in similar situations to warn parents who behave as this mother did that they would inform social services or police if they disappear for days on a bender or drugs, to avoid this type of situation.
It is thought that this may not be an isolated case in many schools, and calls for more research into how parents on drugs look after their children.
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