An English mother has been sentenced to prison for subjecting her children to unnecessary medical treatment. To receive social benefits.
It is a sordid story relayed by the British press on Tuesday. That of a 48-year-old mother sentenced to seven and a half years in prison for having subjected her children to medical treatment they did not need. The company’s goal: to benefit from hundreds of thousands of pounds in social benefits.
The torturer, whose identity has not been disclosed, resided in Croydon, a suburb of south London. For at least ten years, she claimed that her son and daughter suffered from several health problems.
The climax of these lies was reached when surgeons went so far as to implant gastric tubes into her children to feed them. This even though the latter were able to eat normally, say the English investigators.
Another abuse was the administration of steroids to his son for acute asthma when he was not suffering from it. Worse, the latter was even encouraged by his mother to behave like autism, a pervasive developmental disorder manifested by alterations in the ability to establish social interactions and communicate.
Hundreds of thousands of euros in aid
This is how the amount of social benefits demanded has soared. According to the local police, she claimed a total of 375,200 pounds (432,544 euros) in financial aid. And the scams were not limited to health since this mother also claimed additional income from the state. Yet she was living with a man who had a job …
Finally, investigators discovered at his home a stock of unused drugs that cost British Social Security 145,000 pounds (168 euros). The prosecutor in charge of this case, Malcolm McHaffie, accused the woman of “extraordinary cruelty, beyond all understanding”.
The investigation into this case, opened following an alert to its child protection services, lasted three years. A total of 114 people testified.
.
