Blackburn mum, 22, left four children home alone for 24-hour binge

Rebecca Stevenson, 22, of Abraham Street, Blackburn, has been condemned by the judge, police and neighbours over her ‘complete dereliction of duty’.

She drank wine, cider and sambuca, snorted cocaine, went to a house party and continued drinking through the next day and evening in pubs.

Her children, aged four, three, one and three months, had been left home to fend for themselves all night until 10am when the father of the oldest girl raised the alarm.

The one-year-old was in his cot, ‘hysterical’ and ‘soaking wet in urine’.

The baby boy, just three-months-old, had dry sick in his hair and a soiled nappy.

The eldest child had even made a forlorn attempt to feed her baby brother, who was described as ‘pale and grey, not alert and with a sunken head’.

The four-year-old had used dining room chairs to climb on to kitchen surfaces littered with sharp objects such as empty bottles, cans, broken furniture and knives.

Her little footprints are visible amongst spilt dry milk powder on photographs of the filthy scene.

Stevenson did not return home until after 10.30pm, where she was arrested by police.

Yesterday she was given a suspended sentenced after pleading guilty to four charges of child cruelty.

She stood sobbing in the dock at Preston Crown Court as Judge Wright ripped into her parenting skills, saying it was only ‘merciful good luck’ they weren’t more seriously harmed.

Tears flowed down her cheeks as he slammed her ‘absolute, complete dereliction of your duty’.

Judge Wright said: “This was a truly appalling state of affairs.

“We have all seen and been amused by Hollywood's Home Alone, of a much older child, but the consequences of children as young as these being left to fend for themselves are too dreadful to think about.

"They were left to fend for themselves because you had decided to go out for your own personal gratification, drinking and taking drugs.

"You went out and they were left alone and you should realise that with young children they come first.

“They come second, third, fourth, fifth, before anything else.

"Only when they get older do you get to have some place in the pecking order.”

The court heard how on the evening of July 25, the children’s grandfather Paul Fielding dropped the eldest child off with Stevenson around 5pm.

It was a pre-arranged ‘contact’ as the girl, aged four, had been living with the grandparents.

But rather than make the most of having her four children under one roof again, Stevenson fed them, put them all to bed and cracked open a bottle of wine around 8.30pm.

Feeling ‘lonely and depressed’ she finished off the bottle and invited round a group of recently-made friends.

They brought cider and cocaine, which Stevenson admitted taking in the kitchen.

At midnight, the group left for a house party further down the street.

Rather than calling it a night, Stevenson walked out the house as her children slept, locked the door and went to the party.

There she consumed several shots of sambuca before continuing the night and early morning in Darwen.

She then spent the rest of the next day - July 26 - drinking Strongbow in the Jubilee pub in Blackburn.

It was only at 10.30pm - almost 30 hours after Mr Fielding had dropped off the eldest child - that she turned on her mobile and picked up his panicked messages.

She got a taxi back to Abraham Street where she was arrested, making full admissions and telling police she ‘couldn’t cope’.

Steven Wild, prosecuting, said Mr Fielding had tried to ring Stevenson - his step-daughter - early on the morning of July 26.

When there was no answer, he called round.

He was greeted by the rain-sodden eldest daughter leaning out of the lounge window, crying for help.

As Stevenson had locked the front door and taken the key, he had to climb in through the window.

Richard Bennett, defending, said it was a ‘moment of madness’ on his client’s behalf.

He said: “There is no doubt this was a complete dereliction of he duty.

"The absence was without thought or heed for her children and she accepts that and realises the seriousness of what she has done.

“She is determined to re-establish contact and re-start her life away for this area, with her natural father in Berwick-on-Tweed.

"She sees her future and her children’s future best served there.”

Mr Bennett said Stevenson was finding the four children - to three different fathers - ‘extremely difficult and stressful’ to cope with, but didn’t want to admit it and risk losing them to the authorities.

Her boyfriend of three years had left several months earlier after having an affair with her friend, he said.

A statement from Stevenson read out in court said: “I broke up with my partner at the end of March, when I was pregnant.

"He cheated on me with her (the friend) and married her at the same time I gave birth.

“It was a difficult pregnancy. I went through all this alone.

"It had a bad affect upon my mental state.”

A pre-sentence report said Stevenson, who is being treated for depression, ‘adopts a veneer of sophistication’.

Judge Wright did not criticise the local authorities because, he said, Stevenson ‘failed to communicate your difficulties’.

She was given 20 weeks imprisonment, suspended for two years, with a two year supervision order and an eight-week 8pm-6am curfew.

Judge Wright said: “It’s a very fine decision because I, like other members of the public, am horrified by the situation you created.

“If you do get to care for your children again it will be because you have had to prove yourself consistently over a significant period of time. You are not fit at the moment.

“This is one incident of abandonment. There’s no evidence in this case of you going out three or four nights a week.

"That’s important. If there was any suggestion of that you’d be going straight to jail.”

He told her in no uncertain terms: “Assume responsibility for your own life. Try and earn that trust in future.”

Judge Norman Wright lifted a ban on identifying Stevenson after the Lancashire Telegraph made an application in the interests of ‘open justice’.

After a short deliberation, Judge Wright said: "Matters should be free to be reported in the press.”