After a woman in London admitted to killing her disabled 10-year-old son, a judge called the boy “an indirect victim of interruption to normal life caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.” Olga Freeman pleaded guilty to manslaughter by diminished responsibility Thursday for smothering her son Dylan to death by stuffing his mouth with sponges. She was sentenced to confinement in a psychiatric hospital. The boy was severely physically and mentally disabled and required 24-hour care, the stress of which had caused his mother a nervous breakdown during the summer lockdown, according to psychiatrists who evaluated her. Judge Bobbie Cheema-Grubb said of Freeman, “I have no doubt at all that you were a remarkably loving and dedicated mother to a vulnerable child until multiple pressures overwhelmed you and your mind was swamped by a destructive illness.”
