Mother jailed after son drowned as she checked Facebook and took call
Prosecutors say Claire Barnett was distracted uploading pictures to Facebook and taking a call from her boyfriend
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A mother whose two-year-old son drowned while uploading photographs to Facebook and taking a call from her boyfriend has been jailed for five years.
Claire Barnett was jailed for child cruelty after her son, Joshua, died on 17 March last year when he fell into a pond while playing in the garden at his home in Beverley, East Yorkshire, the BBC reports.
31-year-old Barnett pleaded guilty to four charges of neglect at Hull Crown Court on Friday.
She was criticised by the judge for her “bad parenting” and told she posed a “serious risk” to any child for whom she had responsibility.
The court heard that Barnett gave conflicting accounts of what happened at the time of the incident, but prosecutors found she had uploaded two photos to Facebook and taken a call from her boyfriend while she was supposed to be watching her son.
Prosecuting lawyer Peter Moulson, QC, said it was not known how long the toddler had been in the ornamental pond before Barnett found him.
Prosecutors added that Barnett, who has four children, had been contacted by the NSPCC prior to her son’s death for neglecting her children while they played in a busy street unsupervised.
She had also been warned by family members to cover the pond.
Judge Jeremy Richardson said: "Your son died due to your neglectful conduct. You will have to live with that for the remainder of your life.
"For a parent to behave as you did, repeatedly, amounts to consistently bad parenting,” the Hull Daily Mail reports.