A mother from Birmingham, England, has been given a suspended sentence after pleading guilty to six counts of willful abandonment for straight up leaving her six children, ages 3-14, for six weeks while she went on vacation with a dude she met online.


On January 2, this year, the unnamed (for legal reasons) pregnant single mother told her eldest son she was running to the supermarket. But instead of going to the supermarket, she went to Heathrow Airport and hopped on a flight to Australia. When she didn't return home for a few hours, her son called his grandparents, who then alerted police and social services. BBC reports:

The mother, a single parent, ignored messages from her parents and the police, deactivated her social media accounts and refused to fly home until her scheduled return six weeks later, the court heard.


Her children were initially placed in emergency foster care but were then placed in the care of their grandparents. Upon her return, the mother was promptly arrested and slapped with the abandonment charges. After pleading guilty last Thursday, she was given a six month prison sentence, suspended for two years.

John Smitheman, defending the woman, told the court they were thriving academically and unaffected by the experience. He said the woman had been a good mother but had been in an abusive relationship. He said the stress of bringing the children up alone had led to a "very unusual, almost unique circumstance".

Um, children are pretty flexible characters, but I highly doubt they were completely unaffected by their mother lying to them and then leaving for a month-and-a-half even with the support from their grandparents. And while I'm sure plenty of mothers dream about just leaving everything behind and fucking taking off for a nice vacation with a sexy paramour, it takes a real, um, special kind of person to actually do so.