I was near insanity, wealthy mother tells child abuse trial
A WEALTHY mother accused of violently abusing told a court yesterday she was on the ‘verge of insanity’ when she hit her adopted son aged just five.
Susan Wynne-Willson said she was ‘deeply ashamed’ of her parenting skills after struggling to cope with looking after her five youngsters at the family’s £700,000 mansion flat in London.
Giving evidence, the 69-year-old housewife broke down in tears as she told a jury she was at times a ‘loud, volatile and desperate’ mother, adding: ‘I would not have wanted to be a child around myself then.’
But Wynne-Willson said she was shocked when told that two of her children had gone to the police accusing her of biting, kicking and punching them over more than a decade of abuse in the 1980s.
She admitted she once hit her son Daniel and once bit her daughter Poppy, who on another occasion was taken to hospital with a bloody head injury after she threw a toy at her. But she denied charges of child cruelty, labelling the allegations as ‘exaggerated, and fantastical’ and claiming she only wanted her children to be happy.
Born in South Africa, WynneWillson was brought to England as a baby by her mother, who owned a hotel in Margate, Kent, and her father, who ran an airline company, Blackfriars Crown Court heard.
Her parents, who divorced when she was aged 11, sent her to boarding school, although she initially struggled due to what was diagnosed earlier this year as dyslexia and dyscalculia.
She later moved to London, where in 1969 she married Peter Wynne-Willson, 71, a light engineer for Pink Floyd and U2.
The couple moved to Yorkshire, where she gave birth to her children Alice, 45, Rosa, 42, and Poppy, 41, and adopted Daniel, 40. The family enjoyed an idyllic life with an au pair and a daily cleaner.
But after moving to a larger house, she found herself ‘isolated and depressed’ after financial struggles meant they could not afford extra help and she did the lion’s share of the childcare.
Following this, she started a relationship with the father of her youngest son, Billy, 35, split up with her husband and moved with the children to London. She told the court she wanted to give her children a good education.
However, her daughter Rosa claimed this had been a facade – and the children had instead suffered beatings and forced to constantly do chores.
Wynne-Willson told the court this was ‘absolutely untrue’.
But she confessed that she had struggled looking after five children at times. She admitted having hit Daniel in the face, saying she was ‘completely on the verge of insanity’. Under cross-examination, she said: ‘ I feel deeply ashamed because I did not hold the stability of the family together. I did not give the care and support each individual child deserved and needed at the time.’
Asked how she felt having to stand across from her children in court, she replied: ‘It is the last thing in the world that anybody wants. These are two of my children that I love dearly and I do not want anything but happiness for them and their children.’
Wynne-Willson, of Gospel Oak in north-west London, denies five counts of child cruelty and three counts of causing actual bodily harm between 1979 and 1993.
The trial continues.