Mother denies throwing boiling water over son

A MOTHER denied yesterday that she threw boiling water from a kettle over her son 11 years ago when he was five.

The woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, told a jury at Cardiff Crown Court that she was about to pour the water over an ant’s nest in her kitchen when she accidentally bumped into her son and lost control of the kettle.

Her son, now aged 16, previously told the court that his mother, who was a single parent, called him into the kitchen and said “Sorry, but I’ve got to do this”, and tipped it over him.

He added that his mother then said, “Now your ‘effing’ dad will come and see you”.

The 35-year-old woman from Cardiff denies causing her son, who suffered 21% burns to his body, grievous bodily harm.

The woman had the boiled kettle in one hand and ant powder in the other when she heard her son come into the kitchen as her two-year-old daughter was asking to be picked up.

“I turned around and said words to the effect of ‘For God’s sake shut the ‘eff’ up’ or ‘Effing’ shut up’. I know I shouldn’t have said that now.”

The woman added: “As I turned around he was behind me. I don’t know if it was his chest I caught, but I hit something with my wrist and the kettle would have come out of my hand.”

She said her son ran into the living room and she assumed she had startled him by shouting. She noticed water on her daughter’s hair and turned her attention to her, but “the water wasn’t hot on her hair“.

When she next saw her son “seconds later,” he was standing in the living room and “his top was steaming wet.”

The woman said she immediately ran to the front door and called for help.

Lucy Crowther, defending the woman, asked why she had told the hospital treating her son that he had pulled the kettle on top of himself.

She replied: “I was scared of losing my baby. I was terrified he would be taken off me.”

The woman explained that she had spent nine years of her own childhood in foster homes and children’s homes.

Asked if she had told her son, ‘Sorry, but I’ve got to do this’, she said: “I would never tell a child that.”

The boy’s father previously told the court that when his son first told him in 2004 that his mother had burned him deliberately he telephoned her.

He said that when he asked her why she did it, she replied ‘I don’t know’.

Asked by Miss Crowther if this was true, she said: “I put my hand on the Bible I didn’t say that.”

Miss Crowther then asked how she felt about what happened that day. “I hate myself,” the woman said.

The case was adjourned until Monday.