Mum who went to pub as daughter lay dying is jailed
A MOTHER who left her dying daughter at home to go to the pub has been jailed for three-and-ahalf years.
Sharon Goldie went out after dismissing 13-year- old Robyn’s suffering as ‘attention-seeking’.
She returned from the pub with a friend to find her daughter slumped on the sofa, but continued drinking outside. It was only when they discovered Robyn was unresponsive that an ambulance was called.
Goldie was said to have told paramedics ‘she’s at it’, before being informed her daughter had died.
Robyn – who had developed peritonitis and suffered a perforated duodenal ulcer – had begged her mother to get her help in the days l eading to her death and complained of ‘hurting all over’. Sentencing Goldie, 45, at the High Court in Edinburgh yesterday, judge Lord Beckett said: ‘When your daughter became ill and was repeatedly trying to get to hospital, you were substantially motivated by protecting yourself from closer scrutiny by the authorities, which would have inevitably followed hospital admission.
‘Yours was a crime involving considerable cruelty over a long period.’
Goldie previously admitted a charge under the Children and Young Persons Act of illtreating and neglecting Robyn. Her not guilty plea to culpable homicide was accepted.
The court heard Robyn lived with Goldie until she was four before moving in with her grandmother. The youngster had earlier been placed on the child protection register after Goldie was found drunk while supposedly caring for her.
But Robyn returned to live with her mother in Wishaw, Lanarkshire, in 2017.
The charges against Goldie stated she had mistreated her daughter between July 12, 2017, and July 26, 2018, when Robyn died. During that
‘Cruelty over a long period’
period Goldie struck her, pulled her hair, bit her and spat at her. She allowed Robyn t o drink alcohol, smoke cannabis and failed to ensure she went to school.
Prosecutor Ashley Edwards, QC, said Goldie appeared to be a regular at the Melody Bar in Wishaw, adding: ‘Robyn was often seen attending there looking for Goldie and asking for money to buy food.’
She was described as ‘thin, dirty and unkempt’.
On the day of Robyn’s death a social worker visited their home but Goldie only spoke to her through the letterbox.
Defence solicitor advocate Marco Guarino said Goldie had ‘significant mental and physical disabilities’ and had suffered a serious brain injury during her childhood.