http://www.stopinjusticenow.com/news/archive/2009/april/30/02.htm
Boy, eight, taken into care after assault
A mother whose son was taken into care after she "saw red" and hit him with a hairbrush said today that she did not know when the youngster would return home.
The woman, 42, who cannot be named, was handed a community order for 12 months at South Somerset magistrates court after admitting assaulting the eight-year-old boy by beating. The woman, who snapped because the boy refused to get dressed to go to school, hit him with the back of the hairbrush on one shoulder and with the spiked side of the brush on the other, leaving red marks.
She told the court in Yeovil that it was a moment of madness in which she "saw red" and immediately apologised to him and gave him a cuddle when he started to cry. He complained of a sore shoulder at school later that morning and when a teacher saw the marks police were called.
In interviews he told officers that he and his mum often had fights because he went to bed late. The single mother, who also has a daughter aged eight, was fighting breast cancer and was stressed about her health. She has had a mastectomy and will return to hospital for more surgery next month.
Ben Tabiner, mitigating, told magistrates that she had voluntarily attended anger management courses.
"This is a difficult case interfering in the upbringing of a child, this is about a single mum with a difficult child at the end of her tether and in that moment she snapped," he said.
"She realises that she cannot behave that way and she is remorseful. She has been punished by her son no longer living with her, and she is distraught by what has happened in terms of her relationship with him."
http://www.stopinjusticenow.com/news/archive/2009/april/30/02.htm
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