The court heard that the young girl underwent a ‘frightening ordeal’ after she was unable to wake her mother and had to make her way through the streets of St Helier to find a family friend.
Legal adviser Advocate Chris Baglin said that officers only managed to gain access to the room at the Club Hotel and Spa after staff used a master key to open the door, as there was no answer when they knocked. When the authorities entered the room they found the woman lying between two beds and it took officers eight minutes to wake her.
The court heard that the concerned girl had called her father in the UK to tell him that her mother was drunk and had pushed her during an argument. Her father told the girl to make her way from the hotel back to La Bastille bar in Snow Hill to speak to a family friend who her mother had been out drinking with.
However, Advocate Baglin said that after her father had spoken to the friend over the phone, he then asked to speak to the licensee of the bar. As a result of that conversation, the girl was placed in the licensee’s flat for her own safety.
Advocate Baglin said the drinking session had started at lunchtime on Thursday 27 July in Bohemia, the bar/restaurant of the Club Hotel and Spa, with the defendant ending up at La Bastille Taverne. The girl was with her mother throughout, and they returned to the hotel at 8 pm.
The following day, the girl’s father travelled to the Island and took his daughter to his home in England.
Advocate Baglin said that the defendant had no criminal record and had previously engaged with social services in the UK to address alcohol-related issues.
Advocate James Bell, defending, said that his client, who is from Warwickshire, had pleaded guilty at the earliest opportunity.
‘She accepts that she fell asleep and that her daughter could not rouse her,’ he told the court.
He added that she was co-operative with the police and very candid. ‘She does present as genuinely remorseful,’ he added.
In sentencing, Relief Magistrate Sarah Fitz said: ‘I think this is a serious matter. You put your own enjoyment in front of your child’s interests. It must have been a frightening ordeal that made her feel insecure.’
Earlier, the court heard that social services in the UK were going to get involved with the family again and, as result, Mrs Fitz said that she was prepared to impose a fine, as not much more could be done within the Island.
