A mother who killed her newborn daughter and hid the body in a garden shed alongside the mummified remains of an infant boy was spared jail in Britain today.
Alison Johnson (35), who admitted manslaughter by negligence, had wrapped a towel tightly around the infant girl and left her in a laundry basket in the outhouse of her home near Doncaster.
Johnson, who is divorced and has five children, who are no longer in her care, also admitted one charge of endeavouring to conceal the birth of her baby son when she appeared at Sheffield Crown Court.
Mr Justice Gage gave her a three-year community rehabilitation order, saying that he took into account her being a "good and caring mother". He also ordered her to undergo psychiatric treatment at the rehabilitation centre, where she will live for three years.
Johnson who is divorced had to cope with the death of her mother and the needs of five children while living in poor housing with very limited financial resources, the judge said.
Mr Robert Smith QC, prosecuting, said police searched Johnson's home following her arrest in August 2000 and were "confronted by a smell" when they opened the locked shed.
"They saw a laundry basket .. A baby's foot was seen to be protruding from a towel which had been wrapped around the child's body," he said. It was only when the bundle was later unwrapped during a post mortem examination that the "mummified" body of another infant was discovered.
The cause of the infant girl's death could not be positively identified, but pathologists believed she was born alive and might have been smothered or drowned, Mr Smith said.
The infant boy had been at least 36 weeks in gestation and was, therefore, "capable of being born alive".
Mr Smith added: "Given its mummified state the baby was likely to have been born some years before ... and it was not possible to ascertain whether the cause of death was by natural disease."
Johnson, who in 2000 had denied to friends and family that she was pregnant, later claimed she had suffered a miscarriage and had flushed the foetus down the toilet.
Mr Smith said Johnson had been described as a "good and caring mother" to her first five children and that "some psychiatric abnormality" could explain the killing.
"Although the precise disorder or state of mind from which she was suffering at the material time is difficult to identify, all psychiatrists are agreed that some psychiatric abnormality is the explanation for her conduct," he said.
PA