A mum who left her four young children home alone while she went off partying has been given a suspended prison sentence.
Rebecca Stevenson, 22, from Blackburn, Lancashire, reportedly abandoned her two sons and two daughters, aged from just three months to four years, in July this year.
She admitted child cruelty at Preston Crown Court and was jailed for 20 weeks, suspended for two years.
Frankly I can't believe she got off so lightly.
It was "merciful good luck" that none of the children were seriously injured, the court heard.
Stevenson reportedly put her kids to bed at 9.30pm and then drank a bottle of wine before friends came round when she drank cider and took cocaine.
Then she decided to go off to a house party, and carried on drinking throughout the rest of the next day at pubs before going home at 10.30pm.
Fortunately the children were discovered at 10am that day when Stevenson's stepfather went to the house.
According to the BBC, the eldest daughter was leaning out of the lounge window and had been crying.
The one-year-old boy was "hysterical" in his cot upstairs and was soaked in urine, while the three-month-old boy was covered in sick in his cot.
The eldest daughter, who was just four, had tried to feed the baby by climbing on chairs to try to reach his milk.
The BBC says Judge Norman Wright told Stevenson: "We have all seen and been amused by Hollywood's Home Alone, of a much older child, but the consequences of children as young as these being left to fend for themselves are too dreadful to think about.
"They were left to fend for themselves because you had decided to go out for your own personal gratification, drinking and taking drugs."
Stevenson's lawyer said the young mother was "under a great deal of stress" and had been depressed because of the break-up of her relationship.
The children now live with their grandparents.
I know a lot of 22-year-olds go out on drink and drug binges, but if that's what she wanted to do, why did she have four children?
Do you think this was a harsh enough sentence for this woman?
Source: BBC