Nine years for woman who gave son heroin at school gates

[azathoth777]

A drug addict mother who supplied her son with heroin and crack cocaine from the age of nine was jailed for nine years today.

Emma Kelly, 31, gave her son heroin at the school gates, Hove crown court heard, and Judge Anthony Niblett told her she had betrayed her son.

He said: "There can be no greater betrayal of a mother's trust and duty towards her child." Kelly realised that her son had been helping himself to her own drugs, yet did nothing to wean him off them, he added.

"You told a child psychiatrist that you realised you had a choice of informing social services of your son's increasing opiate dependency... You allowed the situation to continue."

"You did nothing to help him and everything to harm him," he said. The boy, referred to simply as X throughout the trial for legal reasons, spent a week in hospital withdrawing from his opiate addiction after he and his mother had been picked up by police for shoplifting in January last year.

Judge Niblett said: "On May 5, 2005, you went to his school and you supplied him there with a wrap of heroin. This was, in my assessment, an act of pure wickedness. You offered no explanation or excuse for it, and there can be none."

He added: "You drove with him in your car to meet dealers and suppliers in various locations in London and Sussex. He was able to tell the police that he rarely went to school."

The judge praised the actions of Sussex Police, but was not so fulsome in his praise of East Sussex social services. He said: "The facts of this case speak for themselves. Despite an increasing number of warning signs, no direct action or intervention was taken in relation to X until police intervened at the end of January 2005."

"I express the hope that the social services department will conduct an urgent and thorough review of this case," he added.

Outside the court, Wendy Fuller of Sussex Police described how the boy was "rocking in his hospital bed, very agitated, crying for his mum" when he was experiencing withdrawal symptoms. She added: "He did have a bond with his mum, but that was borne out of his addiction."

Ms Fuller said today's prosecution was the conclusion of a year-long investigation by officers of the Eastbourne Police child protection team.

Referring to Kelly, she said: "Each time her young son took the combination of illicit substances supplied by Kelly, it was potentially life threatening as they would have had an effect on his heart and other vital organs which were still developing."

The boy's grandfather Terry Kelly said social services had failed to react to his concerns. He said: "I'm disgusted the way they dealt with it, and the school. When he wasn't going to school, the school should have made more inroads."

Kelly was sentenced to nine years in total for supplying her son with Class A drugs, including five years to be served concurrently for child cruelty.

This includes two six-year sentences, to be served concurrently, for supplying him with heroin and crack cocaine, and a consecutive sentence of three-years for giving him heroin when he was in foster care. She showed no emotion during sentencing.