Mother is jailed for subjecting her children to needless surgery so she could claim £375,000 in benefits – despite doctor's warning THREE YEARS before she was arrested 

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Warning: Paediatrician Dr Susanna Hart, pictured, wrote to other specialists at world renowned hospitals in 2010 raising concerns the children were at risk but their mother was not arrested until 2013

A mother who forced her children to have a decade of unnecessary surgery in a £375,000 benefits scam was jailed today as it emerged she could have been stopped three years earlier. 

Paediatrician Dr Susanna Hart wrote to other specialists at world renowned hospitals in 2010 raising concerns the children were at risk but their mother was not arrested until 2013.

The 49-year-old, who cannot be named for legal reasons, tricked doctors into believing her children were suffering from a host of serious health conditions for more than a decade.

Her lies led to her young son and daughter having painful and unwarranted treatments, including having gastrostomy tubes fitted to their stomachs.

Her son had an irreversible operation to reduce his stomach capacity by 20 per cent and he was kept in nappies until he was nearly eight.

And her daughter was fed twice a day via a tube at school despite being able to eat normally. 

She even accused the children of being liars when they denied they were unwell. 

Jailing her for seven years and six months Judge Elizabeth Smaller said she had 'robbed' her children of normal lives in the pursuit of money.

She said: 'Most people seek nothing but pleasure from their children and most people wish their children most of all good health.  

'You sought to make your children a problem to medicalise their needs, to dramatise their lives in a way that could not fail to have some impact upon them when the truth was your children had nothing like such severe illnesses at all.'

Cruel: A mother who forced her children to have a decade of unnecessary surgery in a £375,000 benefits scam was jailed today at Croydon Crown Court

She made sure her daughter was fed through a tube at school twice a day in a humiliating and disruptive affair despite her eating regularly at home.

Judge Smaller said: 'She missed out on ordinary life and being an ordinary child'.

Mrs Justice Smaller also praised Dr Hart for raising the alarm but criticised the many doctors who ignored her.

'Dr Hart sounded an alarm bell about this mother in May 2010 writing to those doctors to whom these children had been referred in the most esteemed teaching hospitals in this capital, only to find herself inadequately supported, and as she says - rebuffed.

'Eminent though those doctors are and at the forefront of medicine in their respective fields - with only one exception, what none of them did was pick up the phone and speak to Dr Hart.

'Dr Hart - viewing herself as merely a humble general paediatrician who deferred to those specialists - felt unsupported in 2010 and unable to bring about any intervention in this family.

'It is a matter of regret that such qualified and experienced medical professionals at world renowned hospitals did not maintain better channels of communication.

'However busy and knowledgeable they are in their field they might all with hindsight have agreed that they could have learned much about this defendant from speaking to Dr Hart and each other. 

The General Medical Council is now investigating the case.

Their mother inflicted cruelty on her children swindle the taxpayer out of one of the largest benefits overpayments in history.

The woman, from Croydon, south London, 'lied at every opportunity' by telling medics her children suffered from autism, asthma, urology and gastric conditions.

She even encouraged her son to show symptoms of autism, resisted nursery staff's attempts to toilet train him and made him take steroids for asthma despite showing no signs of wheezing at school.

The mother, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was today jailed for seven-and-a-half years at Croydon Crown Court.

Andrew Evans, prosecuting, said: 'So serious the degree of financial loss.... makes this case one of the largest benefits overpayments attributable to a single claimant which the Department for Work and Pensions has recorded.'

The mother broke down in tears as she was jailed in front of up to ten members of family.

The mother once took her son to the doctors dressed all in yellow as he clutched a yellow balloon, telling them he was showing obsessive behaviour linked to autism. 

The judge said: 'You would tell those parents in the presence of that child that it was the child that was the liar.'

The pair, who are now being fostered, both had various risky operations under general anaesthetic.

The trial was shown evidence that the children were eating normally on trips to McDonald's and Toby Carvery.

Judge Smaller added: 'I'm of the view that your continued representational fraud was with the intention of obtaining the highest possible levels of discomfiture benefits.

'I'm also of the view that the sympathy and attention you got for being a struggling mother of such ill children was also a very considerable draw for your offending.'

Evil: The suffering she put her children through helped her claim hundreds of thousands of pounds in benefits reserved for parents of severely disabled children needing financial help (file picture)

She jailed her for all 15 counts for seven-and-a-half years to run concurrently.

Stephen Moses QC, in mitigation, said the mother suffered from depression, anxiety issues and from personality disorders.

He said: 'She was otherwise a good mother to those children.'

Detectives from the Met Police's Sexual Offences, Exploitation and Child Abuse Command raided her home and found a hoard of unused prescription drugs and feeding equipment that costed the NHS around £145,870.

The mother and her partner were arrested that day, in May 2013, on suspicion of neglect and child cruelty.

The CPS did not bring charges against the father.

She was wrongly paid £87,424.25 in Disability Living Allowance by faking the children's illnesses between October 2003 and February 2014.

And despite living with her partner who made up to £38,000 a year she falsely claimed Income Support, bringing the total up to £375,198.02.

She was found guilty of four counts of child cruelty, seven counts of making a false representation, two counts of obtaining money by false representation and two counts of fraud by false representation. 

Anne Longfield, children's commissioner for England, said: 'This was a sickening deception - it's hard to imagine how a mother could put greed before the health and well-being of her children in such a horrific way, resulting in them having highly invasive and unnecessary surgery.

'It's vital that the serious case review now reveals how so many professionals could have been deceived by this woman for so long so that we can minimise the chance of this ever happening again.'