This is what a teenage mother a chain smoker, Charlotte Sutton, 19, did. When her 15 months old baby started crying she stubbed out her lighted cigarette on the delicate back of the infant, not once but thrice. Poor baby she must have suffered so much. Now she is scarred for life.

Charlotte was sentenced for nine months for this horrifying act which was reported by the child’s paternal grandparents who used to look after her whenever Charlotte needed help. She claimed that she was tired and could not cope up.

When the grandmother was changing the nappy she found the burn wounds and than she raised an alarm and the matter was reported to the social workers who called the police.

Charlotte’s explanation was a lame one, claiming that her daughter had temper tantrums but she would never stub out her cigarette on her baby’s back and it was an accident when the tip of her burning cigarette had fallen down the back of the child’s clothing while she was busy talking to her friends outside a McDonald’s restaurant.

When the baby was examined by a consultant pediatrician after the incident in last May he said it was unlikely that the burn wounds were caused by hot ash, when confronted Charlotte claimed to the social worker that she knows other teenage mothers who stubbed out cigarettes on their kids to keep them quiet but refused to name them, later she refused to admit that this conversation happened.

She was seen smoking furiously before the sentence and shrugged her shoulders quite nonchalantly when she was sent to young offender’s institution for nine months.

The teenage pregnancies are on the rise meteorically, the sexual freedom at a very young age give rise to relationships which often end up in kids becoming parents at an age when they are unable to take care of themselves leave aside a baby. Frustrations set in leading to such horrifying incidents.