Mother who left children for 24-hour binge avoids jail

By Kim Pilling

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

A MOTHER who abandoned her four young children to go on a 24-hour drink and drug binge was given a suspended jail sentence yesterday.

Rebecca Stevenson, aged 22, of Blackburn, Lancashire, left her two sons and two daughters, aged between three months and four years, home alone to fend for themselves.

It was with "merciful good luck" that none of the children was seriously injured through her "absolute dereliction" of duty, Preston Crown Court heard.

Sentencing her to a 20-week jail term, suspended for two years, Judge Norman Wright said it was "an appalling state of affairs" that she had preferred to satisfy her own personal gratification rather than care for her children.

Stevenson said she put her children to bed at 8.30pm one evening in July this year and proceeded to drink a bottle of wine before further indulging in cider and cocaine when friends called round to her house. Then in "a moment of madness" she told the court she left the children to their own devices as she went out to a house party.

She later carried on drinking throughout various pubs in the town before returning home at 10.30pm the following day.

Steven Wild, prosecuting, said the children were discovered at 10am that day when the defendant’s stepfather called round to the property in Abraham Street.

The eldest daughter was leaning out of the lounge window, was rain-soaked and had clearly been crying, he said.

After climbing through the window he saw Stevenson’s "hysterical" one-year-old son in his cot upstairs.

The youngster was soaked in urine as was a three-month-old boy who was also covered in sick in his cot.

An attempt had been made by the four-year-old girl to feed the baby after the children used dining room chairs to climb up to a kitchen cupboard and reach a tin of milk powder.

"There were kitchen knives and sharp objects on the sofa which were within reach of the children," Wild added.

The children are now in the care of their grandparents with Stevenson allowed supervised visits.

Judge Norman Wright told a tearful Stevenson: "This was an appalling state of affairs. You left four children ranging from the ages of three months old to four years old to fend for themselves."

The judge lifted reporting restrictions on naming the defendant in the interests of "open justice".

Stevenson had earlier pleaded guilty to four counts of child cruelty.

The judge also imposed an eight-week curfew in which she will be not be allowed to leave her home between the hours of 8pm and 6am.

This story appeared in the printed version of the Irish Examiner Tuesday, November 17, 2009