A COVENTRY mother who disciplined her young son by ‘branding’ his back with a kitchen knife she had heated on the cooker has been jailed.
The 26-year-old, who cannot be named to protect the boy’s identity, was jailed for 11 months after changing her initial not guilty plea to guilty.
Judge Andrew Lockhart QC described the incident as ‘an act of real and shocking cruelty.’
Prosecutor Alexander Barnfield said the incident came to light in May last year when the six-year-old boy reported to a teacher he had an injury to his back.
He had a 4cm cone-shaped deep dermal burn to his back, consistent with a hot blade being placed flat against his skin.
The mother, in a manner designed to discipline the boy, had heated a knife on the cooker before pressing it against his back.
The police were contacted, and the mother said her son had climbed onto the kitchen worktop and had burned himself on the grid of the hob.
Mr Barnfield said she had entered her plea on the basis that although she had heated the knife and pushed it against his back, she had not intended to cause serious harm and did not realise just how hot it was.
On realising the seriousness of the injury, she said she applied cream and a dressing.
Without any support network around her, she had resorted to using discipline she had seen as a child in Kurdistan.
Amy Jackson, defending, said: “She was a woman struggling to cope.
“It was in a moment of desperation that she heated it and pressed it onto him, but she didn’t realise how hot it was and did not intend to cause that level of harm, a deep dermal burn.
“It’s accepted the children would be physically punished, slapped to the legs or bottom, but not burning, although there were threats of it.
“She knows it is totally unacceptable.
“She has fully engaged with Social Services and she has completed a parenting course.”
But jailing the mother, Judge Lockhart told her: “As you well know through the life you have sadly lived, life experiences as a child leave a real mark.
“This was not an act of spontaneity.
“I accept you did not plan it, but in a period of a few minutes you heated a weapon and then, to the bare back of a child who looked to you for care, comfort and love, you applied that heated weapon.
“Despite the powerful personal mitigation, this was an act of real and shocking cruelty.
“I would be failing in my public duty if I did not send you immediately to custody.”
