Baby 'accidentally' flushed down toilet

Published on Monday 24 November 2008 21:19

A MOTHER told an inquest that she accidentally flushed her baby down a toilet, before hiding his body in her car.

Claire Jones became pregnant after an affair with a work colleague.

She hid her condition from friends and family, including her partner, claiming that a wheat allergy had caused a mass in her stomach.

When she experienced pain on 28 December last year, a week after her due date, she put it down to diarrhoea. Ms Jones claimed not to have realised she had given birth until she flushed the toilet at the house of her partner's parents in Penarth, South Wales.

Ms Jones, of Cwmbran, told the inquest at Cardiff Coroner's Court: "While I was still on the toilet, I flushed it, and I felt something pull. I stood up slightly, and I could see a foot in the toilet bowl."

When Coroner Mary Hassell asked Ms Jones if she realised she had given birth, she said: "No." Sobbing, she added: "I pulled the baby out. I sat by the toilet. I put him on my lap. He wasn't crying.

"I was trying to feel for a pulse, and there was nothing."

Asked why she did not call for help, she said: "Because nobody knew I was pregnant. Because he wasn't breathing, I just panicked."

She said she tried to revive him by blowing into his mouth. "It wasn't working. There was just nothing I could do. He was blue.

"I wrapped him in a towel," she told the inquest. "I don't remember how, but I must have put him in the boot of the car."

A post-mortem examination could not confirm if the baby, called Daniel , died before or after birth.

For concealing the birth, Ms Jones was previously sentenced to 48 weeks in jail, suspended for two years.