A mother was today starting a three-year jail sentence after allowing her 13-year-old son to take drugs which nearly killed him.

Helen Gillespie left the teenage boy unconscious for 30 hours after he plunged into a coma at their home in Kent View Road, Basildon.

Paramedics and doctors at Basildon Hospital saved the youngster's life when they realised he had overdosed on the heroin substitute, methadone.

However, he remained so seriously ill that he was transferred to a specialist drugs hospital in London.

Further tests revealed the boy also had traces of crack cocaine in his body, said Shamini Jayenathan, prosecuting at Southend Crown Court.

At one time doctors thought he was brain damaged, and it took two months before the youngster pulled through.

He is now in council care and is reported to have made a good recovery.

Since the case came to light Gillespie, 44, has become the target of a savage vendetta campaign by angry neighbours.

Her windows were smashed, the inside of the house was trashed and Basildon Council tried to secure her eviction for her own protection, said the woman's barrister, Nicola May.

She alleged that some of the people who broke into her home were suspected of being on drugs.

Miss May said that Gillespie, who pleaded guilty to child cruelty, now lived in terror. In an attempt to escape her neighbours' wrath she was forced to live at a secret address.

She never wants to return to the house in Kent View Road, said Miss May, who added Gillespie never administered the drugs to her son.

However, the court heard that she stood by while he took them from a kitchen cupboard, and failed to report the incident.

Judge Michael Yelton commented: "She knew that if she told the police what had happened the finger would point at her."

When the boy collapsed on a sofa she left him to soak in his own urine for nearly three days and he suffered extensive bed sores. Gillespie did nothing about it until the paramedics arrived at the house.

The defendant, whose mother and husband have died in the past couple of years, sat in the dock with her head bowed and clutching a walking stick.

It was claimed that she was suffering a degenerate bone disease and at one stage was taking 120 tablets a day.

Before she was jailed Gillespie had urged social services to arrange for her to receive counselling because of her drugs and domestic problems.

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