A Mom is Jailed for Forcing Kids to Have Almost $500,000 Worth of Unneeded Surgery to Get Benefits

A Mom is Jailed for Forcing Kids to Have Almost $500,000 Worth of Unneeded Surgery to Get Benefits

For most parents, seeing their children go through surgery is terrifying and something to avoid at all costs. But for one woman, it was something she engineered. She made her children go through unnecessary surgery so that she could claim hundreds of thousands of dollars in benefits.

croydon

From Metro:

A mother who lied about her children being ill, forcing them to have surgery as part of a plan to falsely claim benefits showed no remorse during her three-month trial, a judge said.

The 49-year-old, from Croydon, south London, told medical staff her children had asthma, autism and other health problems, meaning they were given drugs they did not need and went through invasive treatment including having tubes fitted in their stomachs.

The woman’s lies, which spanned a decade, allowed her to claim more than £375,000 in benefits, before she was arrested by police in 2013.

Following a three-year investigation the woman, who cannot be named to protect her children’s identity, was sentenced to seven and a half years in jail.

She was convicted last month of cruelty, fraud, making a false representation and obtaining money transfer by deception.

Addressing the woman at Croydon Crown Court, Her Honour Judge Elizabeth Smaller said: ‘I note that you have appeared to be very sad at times during this trial – but, watching you as I have for three months in court, in my view, it cannot be said to amount to remorse for what you did.’

Judge Smaller said the mother, despite being made aware of all the risks of surgery, had signed the consent forms to ensure it went ahead, and noted that she had not been ‘filled with the disquiet that most parents would’ have at the thought of their child undergoing such an operation.

The children, a young boy and girl, had surgery to fit them with gastrostomy tubes for feeding, despite being able to eat normally, after the woman lied to authorities to say they had stomach problems.

Her son was given steroids after she claimed he suffered breathlessness, and he was told to behave as though he had autism.
In what the judge described as an ’embarrassing’ episode for him, he was also kept in nappies until he was taken into care aged seven-and-a-half.

The woman was determined to find another problem when it looked as though others she had created were resolved, the judge said.

Judge Smaller said: ‘The lengths to which you went were creative and well-thought through. They were wilful, prolonged and sometimes elaborate.’

She added: ‘You seem not to have been able to see past your own actions to the indignity of your children.’

… After such ‘exploitation’ Judge Smaller said it was evident the woman’s children still loved her.

She said: ‘Despite everything your children still love you – that is no doubt, which makes your exploitation of their unconditional love and trust, for them, all the more serious and bewildering.’

Malcolm McHaffie, deputy chief crown prosecutor for CPS London, said the woman had shown ‘extraordinary cruelty’ and had been motivated by ‘dishonesty and greed’.

Mr McHaffie said: ‘That a mother should go to such lengths of child cruelty, spanning at least 10 years, to support the false and exaggerated benefits claims that she made is beyond comprehension.’

It’s all the more heartbreaking to know that children who have been victimized by such a selfish monster can still find it in their hearts to love her. After all, she’s their mother… for better or for worse. And she’s not deserving of such love and forgiveness.

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