A mother who strangled her severely disabled son with a belt in a hotel room was spared jail yesterday.
Yvonne Freaney, 50, was cleared of murdering 11-year-old Glen but convicted of manslaughter on the ground of diminished responsibility.
In a case described by the judge as the most difficult he had had to deal with, Freaney was given a three-year supervision order. Mr Justice Wyn Williams agreed with psychiatrists that Freaney’s culpability was very low and she had acted out of sheer desperation.
He agreed with the defence that sending her to prison was not in her best interests. He told her: “There can be no doubt that you were absolutely devoted to your son. You had a personality disorder and suffered from a very severe abnormality of the mind. The series of events you went through would have been difficult for even a person of robust personality.”
Cardiff Crown Court had heard that Glen, who was severely autistic, was killed in a room at the Sky Plaza Hotel near Cardiff airport in May 2010. He was not discovered for three days.
Advertisement
The police found Freaney, who admitted manslaughter on the ground of diminished responsibility, sitting on the bed in the darkened room, covered in blood after trying to kill herself by cutting her wrists.
Freaney, who had three other disabled children, had been living in hotels with Glen since leaving her violent husband. She was terrified that social services would take the boy into care, and did not trust anyone else to look after him.
As she was arrested, she told the emergency services: “It’s funny. He was laughing when I was strangling him. That is when I knew he was happy. I had to do it because now no one can point fingers at him. My only regret is that I couldn’t end my own life.”
The breakdown of her marriage led Freaney to leave the family home in Penarth, Vale of Glamorgan, about a month before Glen died. She had suffered years of beatings from her husband. Glen required constant attention, needing help to wash, dress, clean his teeth and eat, and he still wore nappies. After her arrest, Freaney was detained at a secure mental health unit before her trial before being remanded in custody.
The prosecution had argued that although Freaney was a “sad, defeated woman” she was sane and in control of her actions when she killed Glen. But it also accepted that she had done her best for her son. John Charles Rees, QC, mitigating, said that Freaney had never disputed having killed Glen, and had no previous convictions.
Advertisement
Mr Justice Williams said he believed she had been “punished enough”. But while he accepted that there was a low risk of reoffending, he said she needed help with her mental health issues.