Claire Barnett was sentenced to 5 years in jail for bad parenting and child cruelty after her 2-year old son drowned while she checking her Facebook. The 2-year old Joshua fell into the pond in the garden at his home on 17 March last year. While her son was drowning, the 31-year old Barnett was checking Facebook on her phone. She tried to rescue him, but unfortunately she died on the way to the hospital.
Claire Barnett with her son Joshua, who died after falling into a pond.
This wasn’t Claire’s first incident. Her neighbors contacted child services after Joshua got almost hit by a car. Claire pleaded guilty to 4 counts of child cruelty.
“Your son died due to your neglectful conduct. You will have to live with that for the remainder of your life. For a parent to behave as you did, repeatedly, amounts to consistently bad parenting. I trust that you will never be allowed to have further unsupervised contact with any child. If you should have any further children, they will almost certainly be removed from you. You pose very serious risks to any child for whom you might have a responsibility,” told her judge Jeremy Richardson during her trial.