CHINGFORD: Woman guilty of child torture

2:01pm Wednesday 8th October 2008

A WOMAN has been found guilty of repeatedly branding a three-year-old boy with a cigarette lighter.

Tracey Parker, 23, of Otterbourne Road, Chingford, denied charges of child cruelty including assault occasioning actual bodily harm, and neglect, claiming she had passed out from smoking heroin at the time.

However, after three hours of deliberations, a jury at Snaresbrook Crown Court convicted her on both counts.

After bursting into tears regularly during the trial, Parker was stoney faced when the jury returned its unanimous verdict.

She was released on bail and will return to court next month to be sentenced.

The boy, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was in bed in the same house as 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 Ronson lighter which could have caused the distinctive sphere-like burns in Parker's bedroom.

No DNA was found on the lighter, which could mean it was not used to burn the child or the forensic evidence was burned off, the jury was told.

A recovering heroin addict, Parker said she was doing well on a recovery programme but on the night of the abuse her boyfriend, Robin Young, had not delivered her prescribed heroin substitute as planned.

In a "weakened" state of flu-like withdrawal she turned to her former lover, Mr Dempsey, and accepted his offer to smoke heroin.

She claimed she found marks on the child only 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.

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

Prosecutor Michael Shaw urged the jury to find 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 her bedroom, deliberately burned that boy, putting one burn on top of another."

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

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

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

She said the lighter found in smoker Parker's bedroom was one of two common types which could have caused the injuries.