Mum who forced her son to pretend he had AUTISM for ten years in £375k benefits scam is jailed

A MUM who forced her children to have unnecessary surgery so she could swindle the taxpayer out of one of the largest benefits over-payments in history has been jailed.

The 49-year-old tricked doctors into believing her children were suffering from a host of serious health conditions for more than a decade so she could claim £375,000.

Her lies led to her young son and daughter having painful and unwarranted treatments, including having gastronomy tubes fitted to their stomachs.

Her son had an irreversible operation to reduce his stomach capacity by 20 per cent and he was kept in nappies until he was nearly eight.

And her daughter was fed twice a day via a tube at school despite being able to eat normally.

Both children were also excluded from various sports and play because of their 'conditions'.

The mum, from Croydon, south London, "lied at every opportunity" by telling medics her children suffered from autism, asthma, urology and gastric conditions.

She even encouraged her son to show symptoms of autism, resisted nursery staff's attempts to toilet train him and made him take steroids for asthma despite showing no signs of wheezing at school.

The mum, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was today jailed for seven-and-a-half years at Croydon Crown Court.

Andrew Evans, prosecuting, said: "So serious the degree of financial loss... makes this case one of the largest benefits over-payments attributable to a single claimant which the Department for Work and Pensions has recorded."

The heavily-tanned mum, wearing large, gold, hooped earrings under her blonde-highlighted hair, broke down in tears as she was jailed in front of up to ten members of family.

Judge Elizabeth Smaller said she subjected her son to a "serious and irreversible" operation.

The mum also claimed she was a single parent when she lived in a succession of houses with the children's father.

Judge Smaller said: "Most people seek nothing but pleasure from their children and most people wish their children most of all good health.

"That was the starting point for the many doctors and medical professionals to whom you made your false and hugely exaggerated representations and they believed you because why would a parent present their children as ill if they were not?

"They believed you because you were extremely plausible in your presentation, often anxious and tearful in their clinics.

"I'm satisfied that you sought every opportunity to present your children... as suffering with a variety of conditions.

"You sought to make your children a problem to medicalise their needs, to dramatise their lives in a way that could not fail to have some impact upon them when the truth was your children had nothing like such severe illnesses at all."

She made sure her daughter was fed through a tube at school twice a day in a humiliating and disruptive affair despite her eating regularly at home.

Judge Smaller said: "You ensured that the procedure was as medicalised and dramatised and problematic as possible that it made as much disruption to [her] education as possible.

"You prevented [her] from taking full part in various physical activities, saying they were impossible.

"She missed out on ordinary life and being an ordinary child."

She became so attached by the tube that she felt she needed to use it for ten months after she was separated from her mum.

And the boy was made to undergo a life changing operation that he didn't need because of her claims of his asthma and "spectacular" vomiting.

The irreversible operation saw his stomach capacity reduced by 20 per cent.

He was prevented from taking part in physical activities because of the asthma she falsely claimed he had and his unnecessary feeding tube.

Judge Smaller said: "You said it prevented [him] from being a normal by when what was preventing [him] from being a normal boy was you."

The mum once took him to the doctors dressed all in yellow as he clutched a yellow balloon, telling them he was showing obsessive behaviour linked to autism.

The mum even accused the children of being liars when they failed to keep up with her ruse.

The judge said: "You would tell those parents in the presence of that child that it was the child that was the liar."

The pair, who are now being fostered, both had various risky operations under general anaesthetic.

The trial was shown evidence that the children were eating normally on trips to McDonald's and Toby Carvery.

Judge Smaller added: "I'm of the view that your continued representational fraud was with the intention of obtaining the highest possible levels of discomfiture benefits.

"I'm also of the view that the sympathy and attention you got for being a struggling mother of such ill children was also a very considerable draw for your offending."

She jailed her for all 15 counts for seven-and-a-half years to run concurrently.

Stephen Moses QC, in mitigation, said the mum suffered from depression, anxiety issues and from personality disorders.

He said: "She was otherwise a good mother to those children."

Detectives from the Met Police's Sexual Offences, Exploitation and Child Abuse Command raided her home and found a hoard of unused prescription drugs and feeding equipment that costed the NHS around £145,870.

The mum and her partner were arrested that day, in May 2013, on suspicion of neglect and child cruelty.

The CPS did not bring charges against the father.

She was wrongly paid £87,424.25 in Disability Living Allowance by faking the children's illnesses between October 2003 and February 2014.

And despite living with her partner who made up to £38,00 a year she falsely claimed Income Support, bringing the total up to £375,198.02.

She was found guilty of four counts of child cruelty, seven counts of making a false representation, two counts of obtaining money by false representation and two counts of fraud by false representation.