Emma Kelly, a 31-year-old mother from East Sussex, England, has just been sentenced to nine years in prison for supplying heroin and crack to her son when he was between the ages of nine and 11, as well as on two counts of cruelty to a child.
Her son - who for legal reasons has not been named - began using her drugs, which he found around the house. After she discovered what he was up to and didn’t take any steps to stop him, she proceeded to go ahead and supply them to him, even driving around Sussex and London with him to score.
What makes this case particularly interesting, and frustrating - as has been noted here several times, idiotic drug-using and/or drug-dealing parents are a regularly reported event - is that despite authorities having some kind of inkling of what was probably going on, nothing was done.
A case file had been opened by social services on her in March 2003 - the exact details of it have not been revealed - but was closed six months later. (Emma Kelly was convicted of and admitted to supplying drugs to her son between August 2002 and May 2005.)
In the following year, the school her son went to, plus his grandfather, Terry Kelly, raised concerns with East Sussex Social Services: her house was known in the area for being a site of frequent visits by drug dealers, and an education welfare officer had noted that he had hardly been to school lately. So in December 2004, Social Services paid Emma Kelly a visit. She wasn’t home but her son was being looked after by a man under the influence of drugs/alcohol. They came the next day but she refused to let them in; they did notice that drug paraphernalia was littered around inside. That was the extent of their efforts. Social services later claimed they didn’t have sufficient evidence to act on his case.
(Meanwhile, Terry Kelly had written a letter to senior social workers and claims to have been fobbed off, this a truly shocking way for the member of the boy’s family who actually seemed concerned about his welfare to be treated. All to the detriment of this poor kid whose childhood was being ruined because of the malevolent influence of his mother and the incompetence and/or indifference emanating from the government agency with seemingly a lot more legal influence than his grandfather.)
It was only until the next month, January 2005, when Kelly and her son were busted on suspicion of shoplifting, when things started to happen. Police contacted a drug referral worker, who saw the boy and noted that he had enlarged pupils, a sign of possible withdrawal symptoms; he went on to detox in hospital for a week. They also raided the house and found drug paraphernalia. He was then put in foster care. Unbelievably, after her own flesh and blood had been taken away from her, she still went on to supply him with more drugs, visiting him outside his school in May to give him heroin.
He is now 12, in foster care, back at school and “said to be thriving”. I wonder if those responsible at East Sussex social services are doing so too?
