A judge ruled that Kelly Marie Pocock, the 24-year-old mother of three, will not serve jail time for allowing her three-year-old son to smoke cigarettes.
Child services were alerted to the abuse by Natasha Dudley, a friend of Pocock's, who filmed the boy smoking while the mother talked on the phone nearby.
Prosecutor Jonathan Rees said: "Miss Dudley went to look for the boy after he had been missing for half an hour. She found him under a bed with some cigarettes. He was actually smoking one and Miss Dudley said it looked like he had been smoking for a long time. When the boy was taken downstairs he went into the living room where he picked up a cigarette butt from an ashtray and smoked it. Pocock was on the telephone at the time so Miss Dudley decided to film the boy, such was her concern."
Sounds like the child was a fiend who could not stand three minutes without a ciggie. Pocock was allowed to go free because, according to the judge, her children had suffered enough.
Leave it to the British to make Britney Spears look like a wholesome All-American soccer mom.