Mother poisoned her baby’s milk to claim benefits
A MOTHER of eight was jailed yesterday for poisoning her baby daughter in the hope of claiming more benefits.
Rose Jones, 30, admitted repeatedly putting high doses of painkiller Tramadol in breast milk for the one-year-old, before lying and attempting to frame her former partner.
Jones was herself addicted to Tramadol at the time of the offences, when her youngest children were aged one and two.
A judge told how her ‘calculated’ cruelty meant she continued to poison her daughter while the child was in hospital to try to qualify for extra money from the authorities.
Jones was later arrested and police seized two bottles used to store expressed breast milk which contained significant doses of the prescription drug.
It is understood the child made a good recovery after treatment.
Jailing Jones for seven years and two months, judge Ian Lawrie said: ‘It’s hard to begin to take the view that any aspect of your behaviour qualifies for sympathy. Whilst there is no long term damage done, the point is you did cause harm and you know you caused her harm.
‘I have little doubt from looking at both your history and your actions – especially when you gave Tramadol to your daughter while she was in hospital – that you were in your own blunt and clumsy way making a effort to make your daughter’s condition such that it might help with your benefits claims.’
Prosecutor Jo Martin said the poisoning had come to light when the baby had needed hospital treatment after suffering fits.
She told Plymouth Crown Court: ‘The staff had woken to the possibility that she had taken some drugs and they wondered whether this was a case of induced fabricated illness by means of poisoning. What was absolutely clear was Tramadol was being given to her during that time she was being admitted in and out of hospital.’
When she was first interviewed by police, Jones, from Plymouth, denied the claim that she had poisoned her own daughter, and began an attempt to cover her tracks. She showed officers text messages which she claimed incriminated her former partner, Shane Cruickshank. She said he had threatened to blow up her house, poured petrol through her letterbox and set it alight, and sent someone to stab her in the stomach.
Mr Cruickshank was arrested, but was later exonerated after hair samples taken from Jones’s younger daughter showed Tramadol had been in her system for at least six months.
Jones, whose children have all been taken into care, finally admitted child cruelty and perverting the course of justice ahead of her trial last month.
Evidence emerged that Jones’s two-year-old daughter also had Tramadol in her system, but Jones denied this and the charges will lie on file. Prosecutors believe they may never know the full reasons behind her crimes. Judge Lawrie said her actions went far beyond normal child cruelty cases.
He said: ‘What we have here is not violence in its traditional sense, but it many ways it is perhaps worse.
‘It is the administration of poison over a length of time. There is an element of persistence and almost calculation about this.’
Prosecutor Miss Martin added: ‘It is so hard to know why Rose Jones did this. One inference is she was doing it because of her addiction, that she could not help herself.
‘Another inference is she was deliberately poisoning her child to seek sympathy and finance from the authorities.’