SASKATOON — A Saskatoon woman has been sentenced to 5 1/2 years in prison for stabbing her six-year-old son multiple times.
The woman pleaded guilty last month to aggravated assault and on Monday, court heard details about what happened in March 2013 at her home with her two boys, then aged six and nine.
The childrens' father was supposed to pick them up and the older boy told police the mother was "flipping out" after a phone conversation with the boys' dad.
The older child says the mom led the younger boy away and then he heard the boy screaming from a bathroom in the basement of the house.
The boys' father was becoming increasingly worried as his kids hadn't come out of the home, so he called police, who tried to contact the mother by phone.
The older brother let the officers in and police found the younger boy in a tub, with multiple stab wounds, including a serious cut across his neck, and the mother with cuts on her wrists and stomach.
The pair were rushed to hospital. The mother woke up in hospital claiming no memory of what happened.
A pair of psychiatrists said in a report that the mother suffers from depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder and that she likely had a brain injury after being struck by a drunk driver some years before the stabbing.
The father criticized the court's decision to allow the mother to be out in the community while the case wound its way through the court system. He said in a victim impact statement he lived in constant fear that the woman would take the children and hurt them.
He also said his son has difficulty being alone, and is especially frightened of bathrooms. The boy wrote that he finds it difficult to explain his scars to people, and that he still has nightmares.
The older son says he has had nightmares since the day it happened and it has ruptured the relationship with his mother's side of the family and caused constant worries over security at school and at home.
The boys' paternal grandparents both wrote of hyper-vigilance whenever they took the boys out. They also talked about the stress their son endured living with the constant worry that the boys' mother was living just a few blocks away, with nothing more than a monitoring anklet and restraining orders keeping her away.
The woman thanked her family for their unconditional love and support. She told court that she plans to devote herself to becoming someone worthy of being part of her sons' lives when and if they choose to reconnect with her.
