A mother who abandoned her four young children to go on a 24-hour drink and drug binge was given a suspended jail sentence today.

Rebecca Stevenson, 22, of Blackburn, Lancashire, left her two sons and two daughters, aged between three months and four years, home alone to fend for themselves.

It was with “merciful good luck” that none of the children was seriously injured through her “absolute dereliction” of duty, Preston Crown Court heard.

Sentencing her to a 20-week jail term, suspended for two years, Judge Norman Wright said it was “an appalling state of affairs” that she had preferred to satisfy her own personal gratification rather than care for her children.

Stevenson said she put her children to bed at 8.30pm one evening in July this year and proceeded to drink a bottle of wine before further indulging in cider and cocaine when friends called round to her house.

Then in “a moment of madness” she told the court she left the children to their own devices as she went out to a house party.

She later carried on drinking throughout the day at various pubs in the town before returning home at 10.30pm the following day.