A mother from Gloucestershire has been sentenced to three years and nine months in prison for forcing her young son to pretend he was seriously ill so she could claim £85,000 in benefits. The woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, shaved the boy's head and eyebrows and made him use a wheelchair for three years, between the ages of six and nine.
Gloucester Crown Court heard that she sent him to school wearing a bandana and kept him in a wheelchair, despite ridicule from classmates. She also forged doctors' notes and altered the boy's appearance to suggest he was undergoing treatment for autoimmune lymphoproliferative syndrome (ALPS) and later lymphoma, a type of cancer.
Judge Jamie Tabor QC described her behaviour as 'quite beyond the pale' and said she had caused 'undoubted long-term psychological harm' to her son. He noted that she used the fraud to fund a holiday to Florida and obtain a new car, adding that she was a 'congenital liar' who had 'all but lost the ability to tell the truth'.
The fraud was uncovered when the boy's father became suspicious and consulted a GP. The woman admitted one count of child cruelty, eight counts of fraud, and one of forgery. In a victim impact statement, the boy said: 'I don't like her, she is evil. She should be normal, but I don't think she has a normal brain.' He and his siblings have since been taken into care.
