By Sara Nelson
Last updated at 11:09 AM on 17th November 2009
The squalor which four young children were left in while their mother enjoyed a 24-hour drink and drugs binge has been revealed in harrowing pictures.
Rebecca Stevenson, who walked free from court yesterday with a 20-week suspended prison sentence, left her children to fend for themselves in a filthy, cluttered house, while she partied with friends.
One picture shows a kitchen crammed with junk and electrical appliances which could have injured her children.
Filth: The cluttered kitchen in Rebecca Stevenson's house. Tiny footprints visible in spilled milk powder show where one child tried to mix a bottle for her wailing baby brother
Indeed one of her daughters was so hungry she had tried to clamber onto the kitchen counter top to reach food.
The picture also reveals the heartbreaking sight of tiny footprints in spilled milk powder – a reminder of how one child desperately tried to mix a bottle for her baby brother, who was crying with hunger.
Another image, which like the first was taken at the time of Stevenson’s arrest in July, shows a urine-soaked cot mattress, where the callous mother left her one-year-old son.
Her three-month-old son was discovered lying nearby in a soiled travel cot, covered in sick.
Squalor: The urine soaked mattress where the single mother's one-year-old son was left as she partied with friends
Stevenson, who admitted child neglect, also received an eight-week night time curfew.
Judge Norman Wright told the 22-year-old she was guilty of ‘an absolute, complete dereliction’ of her duty as a parent.
The alarm was raised when neighbours saw Stevenson’s oldest child hanging out of a window, crying: ‘Where’s mummy?’
Police found the house littered with empty beer cans and bottles amid a scene of 'filth and disorder'.
Child welfare campaigners reacted with disbelief after Stevenson escaped a jail sentence.
Stevenson admitted four charges of cruelty. Her children are being cared for by their grandparents. She is allowed supervised visits
Claude Knight of children's charity, Kidscape, said: 'The important message should be that the safety and welfare of children must come first and that anyone who puts them at grave risk could face a custodial sentence.'
She added it is not clear how the sentence will help Stevenson to understand the 'potentially tragic consequences' of her actions.
Preston Crown Court heard Stevenson had four young children from three fathers.
She had put them to bed one night in July and then drank a bottle of wine.
She then invited some friends to her house where they all drank cider and snorted cocaine before going out to town.
There she downed shots of Sambuca and stayed up all night, drinking in the pub during the next day before finally arriving home at 10.30pm.
The court heard how the four children, who cannot be named for legal reasons, were discovered that day by Stevenson's stepfather, Paul Fielding, who alerted police.
Stevenson admitted four charges of child neglect over the incident.
In a letter to the court she said she had been under enormous pressure looking after the four children.
She said: 'I broke up with my partner of three years at the end of March. I was pregnant with my second son.
'He cheated on me and got another girl pregnant and married her around the time I gave birth to my son.
'At 28 weeks I was told there was a risk of Down's Syndrome, all this I went through alone and found it very distressing.'
The court was told all four youngsters are being cared for by their grandparents and see their mother only on supervised visits.
Home alone: The children were discovered at Stevenson's house in Blackburn
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