A JURY has retired to decide if a 23-year-old woman repeatedly branded a three-year-old boy with a cigarette lighter.

Tracey Parker, of Otterbourne Road, Chingford, denies charges of child cruelty, including assault occasioning actual bodily harm, and neglect.

She claims she was “gouged out” (passed out) from smoking heroin when the injuries were inflicted.

The boy, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was in bed in the same house as Miss Parker and her former boyfriend Danny Dempsey on January 5, 2007, when he was burned 15 times in 12 places on his body with the heated top of a disposable cigarette lighter.

Police later found a lighter that could have caused the sphere-like injuries in Miss Parker’s bedroom.

The court heard that no DNA was found on the lighter.

This could mean the lighter was not used to torture the child, or the DNA may have been burned off, the jury was told.

A recovering heroin addict, Miss Parker told Snaresbrook Crown Court today (Tuesday) that she was doing well on a recovery programme but that night her boyfriend, Robin Young, had not delivered her prescribed heroin substitute, Subutex, as planned.

In a “weakened” state of flu-like withdrawal she turned to her former lover, Mr Dempsey, in the house in Chingford, and accepted his offer to smoke heroin.

She claimed she only found marks on the child when she came round in the early hours of the morning, but did not call an ambulance until 12 hours later.

In tears in the dock she repeatedly denied she had hurt the boy.

“I would never hurt him, I would rather die,” she said.

Instead she said that either Mr Dempsey or Mr Young, who may have climbed through an opened window, were probably responsible.

Crown Prosecution Service counsel Michael Shaw urged the jury to use their common sense to find Miss Parker guilty, adding that “there was not a shred of evidence” that Danny Dempsey was at the house that night.

He said: “This didn’t happen in an instant.

"Somebody using a cigarette lighter, probably the one found in (Ms Parker's) bedroom, to deliberately burn that boy, putting one burn on top of another. It beggars belief really."

He directed the jury to the evidence of a neighbour who told the court he heard loud music coming from it for three hours after Miss Parker claims she passed out.

Mr Shaw said Miss Parker needed the stereo on to cover the child’s screams.

He continued: “I don’t doubt that she bitterly regrets it and that she can hardly believe it now.

"But it wasn’t Danny Dempsey, it wasn’t Robin Young, it wasn’t the tooth fairy. Sorry, it was her.“

But for the defence, Nerida Harford-Bell said that there was “a very large hole in the evidence” and Miss Parker would not have sought medical advice for the boy if she was trying to cover up her own crime.

She said heroin paraphanalia had been found in the Chingford house, backing up her client’s story, but the lighter found in smoker Miss Parker’s bedroom was one of two other common types of lighters which could have caused the injuries.

She said: “We’re not dealing with crack cocaine, we’re not dealing with other drugs, we’re dealing with heroin.

"It’s well known that... it knocks you out, you go to sleep, and people do die.

“There is no evidence that Tracey Parker caused these injuries to this child.”