A mother who abandoned her three children in a house with no food, clothes or heating to go on a sunshine holiday in Malta was jailed for 15 months yesterday for child cruelty. A mother who abandoned her three children in a house with no food, clothes or heating to go on a sunshine holiday in Malta was jailed for 15 months yesterday for child cruelty. The 29-year-old single mother left the youngsters, aged five, seven and 10, for a week while she basked on a beach, Newcastle Crown Court was told.Her lawyer said that as she fled abroad, she was on the verge of a nervous breakdown because she was struggling to survive financially. But the Recorder of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, David Hodson, said the courts would not tolerate behaviour which put children at risk. "Anyone who behaves in the way you have with such callous disregard for the welfare of their children can only expect punishment," he said.The young woman, not named to protect the children, had tried to leave the youngsters with their grandmother but she refused to look after them Despite that, the mother decided to go on holiday anyway. She left her boys in just the clothes they were standing in, and pinned a note to her front door asking her mother to look after them.She paid for her one-week jaunt by cashing in her child benefit book and selling her income support benefit book for £130. Only when a family friend contacted the grandmother did the family discover what had happened.For two days their grandmother cared for them in the house where they had been abandoned before phoning social services. Social workers found the in a dangerous and appalling state, with exposed light fittings dangling beside the children's bunk-beds.
A gas meter had been disconnected days before the woman fled, and the children were still wearing the same school clothes they had been left in the week before.Miss Anne Richardson, prosecuting, said "The house was appalling. Bags of rubbish were on the floor, cigarette ends everywhere, no washing facilities for the children and no sheets or bedding, not even a toothbrush."There was broken glass on the floor and prescribed drugs lying around, readily available to the children."Paul Sloan, QC, defending, said: "There is no escaping that she had left that house in a truly disgusting state." The judge added: "Dangerous and also disgusting."Mr Sloan said his client had confessed to police on her return from Malta, and admitted that she struggled to cope with the children. "She genuinely feared that unless she had a period of respite she would physically harm [her son]," he said.The woman, who admitted to three charges of child cruelty and neglect, had been kept on suicide watch while in custody for seven weeks.She was already known to social services, and her children had been placed on the at-risk register in 1995. She denied three counts of abandonment at an earlier appearance, and the pleas were accepted, but the charges left on file.The court was told that the children were so traumatised by being abandoned they wanted nothing more to do with their mother They are all now in care and are hoping to be adopted The mother has agreed not to contest the custody.. Westminster Abbey has been hit by its third scandal in three years with the resignation of a senior official amid allegations of sexual misconduct.
Westminster Abbey has been hit by its third scandal in three years with the resignation of a senior official amid allegations of sexual misconduct. The Abbey's clerk of works, George Burroughs, has quit after he was suspended when a female employee made the accusations.Mr Burroughs, who helped in the £25m restoration of the Abbey, completed in 1994, was one of its highest ranking lay officials. He was a member of its collegiate body, which gave him ceremonial privileges, and which the dean, Wesley Carr, has said made him "not merely an employee" but a "colleague in the mission of the abbey". Other members of the college include the former Foreign Secretary, Lord Hurd.In 1995 Mr Burroughs read a lesson at a ceremony to celebrate the restoration in a service attended by 1,700 guests including the Queen.Yesterday a spokesman for the Abbey confirmed that Mr Burroughs resigned on 16 May to David Burden, the Receiver General, who is head of the Abbey's lay staff.The spokesman refused to comment on the reasons for Mr Burroughs' dismissal."All such matters are handled extremely thoroughly, carefully, with the utmost discretion and in accordance with the law," he said.However, Mr Burroughs was suspended after the allegations by the female employee, which he denies. His suspension meant he had to give up his home in Dean's Yard on the Abbey grounds and staff were told not to speak to him.Mr Burroughs, 50, who was given the British Empire Medal after serving as a sergeant major in the Royal Engineers, could not be contacted for comment yesterday.The affair follows two previous staff departures that focused attention on the management of the abbey.In March this year the headmaster of the Abbey's choir school, Richard Overend, resigned in the wake of allegations he had bullied some of the 37 pupils.The choir has been fending off controversy since Mr Carr sacked the former organist Martin Neary three years ago.
