Woman denies leaving toddler to 'rifle through bins for food' while she went out partying for the weekend

A woman accused of leaving a toddler home alone for a weekend denied that he was left to scavenge for food in bin-liners.

Kelly Tollerton, 22, who is alleged to have abandoned the boy to go "partying", insisted she never neglected him and "loved him very much".

A court has heard how shocked police found the two-year-old penned into a filthy kitchen by a baby gate at Tollerton's otherwise deserted home.

He was dirty, half-dressed, sobbing, shaking with cold and surrounded by nappies, broken crockery and water from an overflowing sink.

His harrowing plight was revealed only after neighbours in the same block of flats in Lincoln spotted evidence of flooding and called police.

Tollerton, who was allegedly meant to be looking after him, later said she had arranged for a babysitter, Emma Barton, to take care of him.

But Felicity Gerry, prosecuting, told a jury: "It was a deliberate act of abandonment so that, in her own words, she could 'go out and party'." 

Tollerton, who denies charges of child cruelty and perverting the course of justice, denied that she left the boy to fend for himself.

She told Lincoln Crown Court: "I wouldn't do that. I didn't leave him. As far as I was concerned, he was in the capable hands of Emma Barton." 

Cross-examining her, Miss Gerry suggested the reason the kitchen was so untidy was because the boy had been rummaging in bin-liners.

She said: "That's the reason the place was strewn with rubbish - because he was looking for something to eat."

Tollerton said: "I don't know." 

Miss Gerry added: "As you were out the child was scrabbling around, looking for food?"

Tollerton replied: "I didn't go out partying at all that weekend." 

Tollerton claimed she went for a meal with her then boyfriend Ken Hill, a man nearly twice her age, on the Friday night, leaving Miss Barton in charge.

She said she spent the rest of the weekend at his home, adding: "I didn't go into town that weekend at all. I wasn't partying. I was at Ken's house." 

She also denied trying to persuade another friend, Rachael Manning, to lie in a bid to support her claim that Miss Barton was looking after the boy.

Tollerton, who is alleged to have abandoned the youngster in November 2006, told the court: "I didn't do that. I didn't say anything like that to her." 

The jury has heard how social services became involved with the boy when he was admitted to hospital underweight at the age of two months.

But case workers ended their involvement just over a year before he was discovered alone at Tollerton's home, the court has been told.

Tollerton insisted: "I wouldn't have abandoned him. I was never neglectful of him at all. I took care of him as best I could. I loved him very much." 

The trial continues.