Parents at pub while child, three, drank lager at home

Parents at pub while child, three, drank lager at home
Neglect couple's kitchen Beer cans had been left around the house

A couple from Blackpool who left their five young children at home while they went out drinking have been given suspended jail sentences.

Police were called to Angela Freer and Christopher Steele's home in September 2009 and found four children half-naked and one, aged three, drinking lager.

Freer, 31, and 55-year-old Steele both admitted five counts of child neglect at Preston Crown Court.

The children are now in the care of the local authority.
Neighbours' concerns

The couple were sentenced to 20 weeks' imprisonment for each of the five counts, suspended for two years.

Officers had been called to the house by concerned neighbours - who police said had helped avert a tragedy - on 15 September 2009.
Neglect couple's lounge Police said the house was "in disarray"

They found the children, then aged between three and seven, alone.

Four of the children were wearing minimal clothing and one was drinking lager from one of a number of discarded cans littered around the property.

Officers entered and found the house in "disarray" with empty beer cans and sharp knives left lying around, Lancashire Police said.

There was also no toilet paper in the house and the children had no clean clothes or bedding.
'Extremely vulnerable'

Det Insp Tony Baxter, of the force public protection unit, said he was "appalled" by the parents' behaviour.

"They clearly had no regard for the safety of their children, leaving them in an extremely vulnerable situation whilst they went to the pub for a night out.

"The conditions in which the children had been left were beyond belief and when officers arrived at the scene, they found a three-year-old child drinking out of a lager can.

"Children have every right to feel safe and protected particularly by their parents.

"I have no doubt that the actions concerned neighbours may well have averted a tragedy."

SO why the hell were the mcanns NOT charged and the twins taken off them????

Ludicrious! They should have been given a free flight to see the Pope and had a fund set up! Plus the children free beer for life.

Bring em up right! As the twig is bent, so grows the tree!

Et cetera

People like that shouldn't be allowed to have children - a suspended sentence? Disgusting, what kind of a deterrent is that?

Curiousfox wrote:People like that shouldn't be allowed to have children - a suspended sentence? Disgusting, what kind of a deterrent is that?

Too right.

The problem was they weren't a couple quick enough to hide behind the fact that they were doctors and therefore 'responsible parents'.

As awful as this is, it's a common occurance in some families. This family obviously need help and guidance but it only highlights to me, the fact that the McCanns were well educated, middle class parents, yet they neglected their kids just like this family did,but had the nouse and the connections, to make it the phenomenon that it has become.
For years, we have said, 'if they'd have been from a council house, on benefits, blah blah blah' and it's true. The McCanns had the intelligence to defend themselves from day one, but the neglect was the same. I'm not saying Madeleine was drinking from lager cans - but she no doubt had the opportunity to drink from a wine bottle. The difference being - well, sadly, there is no difference.

rammy2 wrote:As awful as this is, it's a common occurance in some families. This family obviously need help and guidance but it only highlights to me, the fact that the McCanns were well educated, middle class parents, yet they neglected their kids just like this family did,but had the nouse and the connections, to make it the phenomenon that it has become.
For years, we have said, 'if they'd have been from a council house, on benefits, blah blah blah' and it's true. The McCanns had the intelligence to defend themselves from day one, but the neglect was the same. I'm not saying Madeleine was drinking from lager cans - but she no doubt had the opportunity to drink from a wine bottle. The difference being - well, sadly, there is no difference.

Yes rammy you are right, there are many more like this sadly. It generally happens in households where there hasn't been much of an example set to the adults when they were children, maybe learned behaviour.
So I suppose this is where much anger does come from towards the McCanns. I do remember when the news first broke about her going missing, being extremely shocked that two educated, professional people could consider leaving their babies alone like that.

Spot on rammy, the McCs had absolutely no excuse. Even Kate's Mum was astonished at what they'd done. 'Where were you' she said.

Justiceforallkids wrote:Parents at pub while child, three, drank lager at home
Neglect couple's kitchen Beer cans had been left around the house

A couple from Blackpool who left their five young children at home while they went out drinking have been given suspended jail sentences.

Police were called to Angela Freer and Christopher Steele's home in September 2009 and found four children half-naked and one, aged three, drinking lager.

Freer, 31, and 55-year-old Steele both admitted five counts of child neglect at Preston Crown Court.

The children are now in the care of the local authority.
Neighbours' concerns

The couple were sentenced to 20 weeks' imprisonment for each of the five counts, suspended for two years.

Officers had been called to the house by concerned neighbours - who police said had helped avert a tragedy - on 15 September 2009.
Neglect couple's lounge Police said the house was "in disarray"

They found the children, then aged between three and seven, alone.

Four of the children were wearing minimal clothing and one was drinking lager from one of a number of discarded cans littered around the property.

Officers entered and found the house in "disarray" with empty beer cans and sharp knives left lying around, Lancashire Police said.

There was also no toilet paper in the house and the children had no clean clothes or bedding.
'Extremely vulnerable'

Det Insp Tony Baxter, of the force public protection unit, said he was "appalled" by the parents' behaviour.

"They clearly had no regard for the safety of their children, leaving them in an extremely vulnerable situation whilst they went to the pub for a night out.

"The conditions in which the children had been left were beyond belief and when officers arrived at the scene, they found a three-year-old child drinking out of a lager can.

"Children have every right to feel safe and protected particularly by their parents.

"I have no doubt that the actions concerned neighbours may well have averted a tragedy."

SO why the hell were the mcanns NOT charged and the twins taken off them????

Probably because they did it abroad.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1374907/Why-werent-jailed-Drunk-parents-abandoned-children-filthy-squalid-house-walk-free-neglect-case.html

the Daily Mail has this story too. The page is named "Why Weren't They Jailed?" They are taking comments.

In the quoted part of the article there's no mention of how long the children were left, or how often. The oldest one is seven. Are some parents completely mad? Why, why, why, do people think it's acceptable to leave babies and toddlers on their own while they have a night out? I wonder if some adults simply can't put themselves into the shoes of children, or empathise with them, and forget what it was like to be that age themselves.

jejune wrote:In the quoted part of the article there's no mention of how long the children were left, or how often. The oldest one is seven. Are some parents completely mad? Why, why, why, do people think it's acceptable to leave babies and toddlers on their own while they have a night out? I wonder if some adults simply can't put themselves into the shoes of children, or empathise with them, and forget what it was like to be that age themselves.

You rightly ask 'Are some parents completely mad?' and the answer is maybe not mad in the strictest sense of the world, but certainly completely foolhardy, idiotic and utterly senseless. And that includes all of the Tapas parents who went off to the Tapas bar at night leaving their children alone in the apartments. They all knew there were risks in doing so; the risk of fire was mentioned, for a start, yet they still thought it ok to leave toddlers to deal with a fire if one started - how reckless is that? The risk of sickness, perhaps a child vomiting, was also present, and children can choke to death on their vomit. And for any child that could get out of bed, there was always the risk of an accident. Or indeed there was a risk of an intruder, perhaps someone intent on stealing, but who knows what might have happened if a child woke up, saw a stranger and started to scream?

Yet all of these parents seemed to think it ok to leave these tiny children alone. Yes, the Paynes had a baby monitor but how would that have helped in the case of fire or of accident or even an intruder? What would they actually have heard if any of these things had happened? Smoke can drift from one room into another and kill long before anyone listening would hear the sound of a fire. A child could get out of bed, climb up on something and fall long before anyone could get from the Tapas bar to prevent it. An intruder would naturally enter as quietly as possible. The simple truth is that all of these parents left their children in a situation that could very easily have become dangerous, and in Madeleine's case did - in some as yet unknown way - become very dangerous indeed.

How they escaped charges for child neglect or abandonment I'll never know. This Blackpool couple who left their 5 children in a dangerous situation have quite rightly had their children removed from their care and have been handed prison sentences - they're more than lucky the prison sentences have been suspended. Maybe if one of their children had disappeared they'd have been even luckier, as they could then have set up a Fund, got the media on their side, had a hot line to the PM and sued the leading policeman on the case if he dared to voice an opinion.

All IMO.

Curiousfox wrote:People like that shouldn't be allowed to have children - a suspended sentence? Disgusting, what kind of a deterrent is that?

love your avatar Curious Fox!

and you are right, I despair of these kinds of parents. Leaving the kids alone with nothing to drink but lager? I hope they removed them in time for them to have some kind of decent upbringing and hope the foster care system does these kids right...