{"id":231263,"date":"2026-01-13T18:33:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-13T18:33:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/231263\/"},"modified":"2026-01-13T18:33:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-13T18:33:10","slug":"christchurch-mother-sentenced-for-assaulting-3-year-old-autistic-son","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/231263\/","title":{"rendered":"Christchurch mother sentenced for assaulting 3-year-old autistic son"},"content":{"rendered":"
She then made a fist and swung it at his head but did not make contact. <\/p>\n
The woman was too intoxicated to comment when spoken to by police but denied the allegations put to her. <\/p>\n
\u201cYou need to learn different strategies so you don\u2019t take your frustrations out on your son,\u201d Judge O\u2019Driscoll said. <\/p>\n
A 40-year-old mother appeared in the Christchurch District Court on a charge of assaulting a child. Photo \/ George Heard<\/p>\n
The court heard the 40-year-old had originally pleaded not guilty to assaulting a child but had since changed her plea.<\/p>\n
Judge O\u2019Driscoll said she had a number of convictions with the most recent in 2018.<\/p>\n
The judge said he had considered a sentence of judicial monitoring but would not impose it in light of the gap between her offending.<\/p>\n
He sentenced her to 12 months\u2019 intensive supervision with conditions to attend a non-violence programme, counselling and not consume alcohol.<\/p>\n
\u201cPut your time and effort into your son.\u201d <\/p>\n
Al Williams is an Open Justice reporter for the New Zealand Herald, based in Christchurch. He has worked in daily and community titles in New Zealand and overseas for the last 16 years. Most recently he was editor of the Hauraki-Coromandel Post, based in Whangamat\u0101. He was previously deputy editor of the Cook Islands News.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"She then made a fist and swung it at his head but did not make contact. The woman…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":231264,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[28210,1443,13735,51247,112398,4487,11220,69895,31046,2082,106,6178,111,43,139,69,26520,5161,104646,22639,107,1316],"class_list":["post-231263","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-3yearold","tag-about","tag-actions","tag-assaulting","tag-autistic","tag-christchurch","tag-comment","tag-confronted","tag-drunk","tag-for","tag-head","tag-mother","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-pushed","tag-sentenced","tag-slapped","tag-son","tag-then","tag-when"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231263","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=231263"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231263\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/231264"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=231263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=231263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=231263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}