Judge Mark Horton: 'There can be few offences more likely to cause anger'
A mother who bit her five-year-old son in a ‘revenge’ attack for hurting his baby sister was today jailed for five months.
The 28-year-old mother of two, who cannot be named, thought the boy had injured his eight-month-old sister at the family home so sank her teeth into his arm.
The boy went back to school with two separate marks from the bite - both over three centimetres - clearly visible to staff.
Asked why she did it, the woman told police: ‘I don’t know. Probably that he hurt his sister so he’s got to be hurt.
‘I don’t know. It’s an automatic reaction to protect your youngest. He had already had his DS (Nintendo games console) confiscated earlier this week.
'I feel really guilty. At the end of day it’s my baby. He’s my baby.’
Sentencing her at Gloucester Crown Court Judge Mark Horton said: ‘There can be few offences more likely to cause anger and desire for retribution from the public than a case of a parent who maliciously and without cause assaults her own child.
‘The fact you did so by biting, not simply striking this child, only inflames the circumstances of this offence.
'It can only be seen as a desire to cause the child pain by way of revenge which caused the bite.’
Earlier in the case Judge Horton said: ‘This is a case of pure anger where she appeared to have taken revenge on her own son for injury caused to the other child.’
The woman, who had ambitions to become a counsellor, has since seen both children taken into foster care.
She pleaded guilty at an earlier hearing to a charge of wilfully assaulting a child under 14 on May 4 this year at their home in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire.
She will serve half of her sentence before being released on licence.
Prosecutor Julian Kesner said: ‘This is a case of inadequate parenting by a mother who, in interview, admitted biting her son, had difficulty explaining why she had done it, but said that she was sorry for having done so.
‘It was her admission that meant the investigation could be closed.’
The woman was brushing her teeth in the bathroom when she asked the boy to fetch his sister who was lying on the bed crying, Mr Kesner said.
Seconds later she heard a ‘bang’ followed by the sound of the girl crying, before rushing to the scene.
Mr Kesner went on: ‘She doesn’t know what happened but assumed that he somehow banged her and that she was in much more distress than usual. She was crying a lot.
‘She went from the bathroom to the bedroom. It seems at that point she bit her son.’
A teacher spotted the wounds on his left forearm two days later and on May 7 a consultant paediatrician found two separate injuries. One measured 1.5in (3.7cm) and the other 1.3in (3.4cm).
The skin was not broken. The boy did not cry and just asked for a hug, the child’s mother told the authorities. She has three previous unrelated convictions.
Lloyd Jenkins, defending, said his client was struggling as a single mother and the bite was a ‘knee-jerk reaction’.
He said: ‘She has started a 12-week course with regards to improving her parenting skills, dealing with anger management issues, not flying off the handle, not seeking revenge and not biting her five-year-old child.
‘She wants to become a counsellor and enjoys cookery. She has the potential to have a good life.’
After the sudden death of her father when she was just nine, she ‘went off the rails’, seeing a psychiatrist and attempting suicide as a teenager, Mr Jenkins said. She had also suffered domestic abuse.
He also revealed it would be her daughter’s first birthday tomorrow.
Mr Jenkins said: ‘It’s a very sad time. She bitterly regrets her actions. She is remorseful. Whether it was revenge or over-reaction is a matter of interpretation.’
Judge Horton said the treatment of children was ‘the test of a civilised society’ and he would be failing in his duty if he did not jail the woman immediately.
Source: Daily Mail UK., September 23, 2008
Comments:
Mother is a little wayward with her parenting methods, but I cannot say for the logic of the Judge's sentence here. I felt that a better alternative would be community service at children homes and a mandatory parenthood counseling would have been ideal here.
Mother jailed for BITING her five-year-old son in 'revenge' for hurting his baby sister 
Re: Mother jailed for BITING her five-year-old son in 'revenge' for hurting his baby sister 
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