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A beautician who pleaded guilty to killing her toddler with a pair of scissors has been jailed for five years.

Hazel Waters, 47, admitted the manslaughter of her son Muhammad Hassan Khan between October 15 and 26, 2014.

She described her two-year-old as a “fake child” on the day she killed him by stabbing him with a pair of scissors in the neck.

Judge Patrick McCarthy handed down a seven-year sentence but suspended two years at the Central Criminal Court yesterday.

He said Waters, who was diagnosed by psychiatrists with having a personality disorder “must be reintroduced into society in a structured manner”.

The court heard the accused, of Ridge Hall in Ballybrack, South Dublin, has been in custody in the Central Mental Hospital but has refused to engage in any meaningful explanation of what had happened.

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It is understood she will be transferred to the Dochas in Mountjoy Prison to be processed before returning to the CMH to continue her sentence.

Waters, who had been a “devoted mother”, had a psychotic episode when she killed her boy at their apartment.

During sentencing, Judge McCarthy said: “One cannot but be moved by the event.

“Nobody would doubt that it’s a particularly tragic thing that a child of this age would be killed unlawfully by his mother.”

The court heard she killed her son and left his body at their apartment before going to her sister-in-law’s house, where the gardai were called.

Officers then went to Waters’ home to find the child in his bedroom with the scissors in his neck and his mother’s bloody footprint beside the body.

Detective Sergeant Joe O’Hara, who led the investigation, said Waters was distressed when she went to the home of her sister-in -law Maria Waters.

The accused had no history of psychiatric problems but had since been diagnosed with an underlying emotionally unstable personality disorder which in acute circumstances gave rise to a psychotic state.

She had separated from her husband, whom she alleged had been abusive, and was found to be have been under “extreme stress”.

Waters had originally been charged with murder but she denied that charge and the prosecution accepted her manslaughter plea.

Judge McCarthy said the only mitigating factor he could consider was her plea of guilty.

Psychiatrists found while she was not considered insane in law, her mental state left her with diminished responsibility at the time of the killing.

Previously, Detective Sergeant Joe O’Hara told prosecutor Luan O Braonain that Waters sent a text message to her other son Jessie on the morning she killed Hassan.

The text said: “Hassan is a fake child. They are making people and children to look the same.”

She had also claimed her son and her sister were “clones”. When asked where Hassan was, she told her sister-in-law “they had taken him” but was unable to say who “they” were or where he was.

There had been a previous CRI child safety alert and the gardai were called.

When officers went inside Waters’ apartment, it was in disarray, with a lot of material that had been torn and put into bags.

The body of the child was found in his bedroom.

Staining from what appeared to be blood splattering was on Waters’ jeans. The accused did not recall the events of the killing. A social worker had tried to contact her up to the morning of the killing, when she could not gain access to the apartment.

When told she was suspected of her son’s murder Waters said she would never hurt him.

She could not recall sending the text to Jessie and asked why she would mention cloning, she said: “I have no idea.”

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Det Sgt O’Hara agreed with Brendan Grehan SC that Waters had been in a relationship with Hassan’s father, Saleem Khan, since 2008 and alleged it was abusive both mentally and physically on occasion.

Judge McCarthy noted the treating doctor at the CMH said Waters had declined to engage in psychotherapy and would not “give any explanation as to the event itself”.

He said: “It is clearly a case where as she is reintroduced into the community, she must in her own interest and the interest of the community submit to treatment.”

The judge backdated the sentence to October 16, 2014, when Waters went into custody.