Hampshire Police defends treatment of woman in smacking row
POLICE have defended trailing a mum and sending child protection experts to visit her after she threatened to smack her son in a Hampshire supermarket.
They spoke out as it was revealed that social services would keep a file on the woman for six years even though the investigation came to nothing.
An off-duty officer followed the woman home but it wasn’t until six weeks later that she was questioned.
The file will be referred to if the mother applies to work with children, foster or adopt.
The woman admitted threatening her 11-year-old son with “a hiding” if he did not behave.
Now the 34-year-old, a regular churchgoer, says she feels “criminalised”.
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