Mum faked son’s illness for benefits

A MOTHER claimed £130,000 (€142,000) in benefits by pretending her son was “one of the sickest children in Britain”, giving him false medication and forcing him to have surgery.

Detective Constable Mark Uren, who led the investigation, said after today’s hearing at Exeter Crown Court that the woman had “manipulated highly regarded medical professionals” to con the public purse.

He said the 35-year-old claimed £20,000 a year in disability living allowance for six and a half years by forcing her young son to be fed through a tube.

She told doctors the boy had diabetes and spiked his urine samples with glucose to fake tests.

She conned paediatricians into believing he needed a wheelchair, claiming he had cerebral palsy, cystic fibrosis, a throat disorder called dysphagia and countless food allergies.

Since the boy was an infant she maintained to doctors, friends and family, even his father, that he was unable to swallow food.

She took her son to school in a wheelchair fitted with oxygen bottles and maintained that he had to be fed through a tube into his stomach.

Doctors, who were never able to identify the mystery illness, eventually operated and fitted him with a permanent feeding tube.

Det Con Uren said: “This woman made applications to charities claiming that her son was one of the sickest children in Britain.

“She claimed he was allergic to gluten and wheat and that he could not swallow so an operation was carried out to put a tube into the stomach. But when police seized a computer from her house there was a video showing the boy eating a roast dinner with Yorkshire pudding at a pub.

“Video footage also shows the boy running around on the beach without the aid of oxygen or a pump feed and shows he was a normal, fit and healthy child.”

The boy spent at least six weeks a year in hospital.

Dozens of children’s charities also gave her freebies including a new car, tickets to see the X Factor and a cruise in Tenerife.

The woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, avoided detection by missing key hospital appointments, on one occasion claiming she couldn’t attend a diabetic appointment because she had been raped.

The false rape claim was reported to police, who were on the verge of making an arrest, after the woman caused injuries to herself to substantiate her claims of a violent attack.

She was eventually found out when a paediatrician raised the alarm after reviewing her son’s medical files and became suspicious that his health problems had gone on for so long without a clear diagnosis.

In court today the mother admitted one count of cruelty on a person under 16, from which she caused or procured a child to be ill-treated, abandoned or exposed causing unnecessary suffering or injury to health.

She also admitted a charge of intending to pervert the course of justice for making a false accusation of rape.

Det Uren, who investigated the case over two years, said he believes the woman’s claims were first made for attention but when it was obvious how much she could claim in benefits, she carried on.

Det Uren said the woman was cunning and manipulative in her deceit of the medical profession, which allowed her to claim a higher level of disability benefit.

“She manipulated highly regarded medical professionals, who believed her reports that her son was very sick,” he said.

“This caused him to go through some serious invasive medical operations.

“This is not a one-off offence; it is a sustained period of time where she has been calculating and has lied.”

Judge Stephen Wildblood QC ordered psychiatric reports before sentencing.