A former nurse has been jailed for stealing £65,000 from her dementia-suffering mum, leaving her unable to pay care home fees.
Gillian Hillier, 54, said spiralling mortgage and business debts led her to “borrow” the money from the 88-year-old.
But Liverpool Crown Court heard she spent much of the money shopping and jetting between England and a home in Malaga.
Meanwhile she failed to visit her mum or pay her a personal allowance for basic items including clothes and toiletries.
Care home staff in Crosby raised the alarm after bills were not paid because there were insufficient funds.
Ian Criddle, prosecuting, said Hillier, of Hansby Drive, Hunts Cross, was granted enduring power of attorney over the pensioner’s financial affairs in October 2009.
The mum-of-two took control of her pension and money made from selling her house but stole funds from March 2010 to July 2014.
An investigation was launched by the Office for Public Protection, which contacted Hillier in July about the shortfall.
She responded by saying she was sorting it out in the next few days.
Mr Criddle said: “There was no explanation save for ‘difficulties in life’.”
She promised to repay the money by August but failed to do so and in September admitted she had “severe personal financial problems”.
The court heard she had paid back nearly £18,500 before the matter came to light.
Mr Criddle said she spent £9,543 at “various retail outlets” and withdrew £43,751 in cash, the vast majority from ATMs in Malaga.
She accrued £3,200 in bank charges and wrote £11,482 of cheques.
When arrested Hillier explained her family’s mortgage broking business had gone under due to the financial crisis.
She said she and her husband owned two properties in England and one in Spain, but all three were in negative equity.
Hillier accepted she had rarely visited her mum.
Mr Criddle said: “She said she spent the money on herself, on flights backwards and forwards to Spain and also mortgage arrears.”
The care home sustained losses of £28,000 but is still caring for her mum, who is not aware of her daughter’s betrayal.
Hillier, who admitted theft and sobbed in the dock, was not represented in court.
The judge, Recorder Mark Ainsworth, said she pleaded guilty at the earliest opportunity, showed shame and remorse and had no previous convictions.
![Ex-nurse jailed for stealing thousands of pounds from dementia-suffering mum]()
The Queen Elizabeth II Law Courts, Liverpool Crown Court. File picture. Photo by Ian Cooper
He said she retained the support of her family who “are equally appalled at what has happened as you are”.
Hillier said she spent the money on living expenses rather than on luxury items.
Reading from a prepared statement, she said: “This account is not an excuse. I did a wrong thing. I wish I hadn’t done it but at the time I felt like it was the only option open to me.
“I never set out to steal from my mother.”
Hillier said she started work in the NHS at the age of 16 and spent 23 years as a staff nurse, midwife and health visitor.
She said she raised her children as a single parent for seven years and had a good relationship with her parents, who helped her bring them up.
Hillier said she and her husband had earned a good income but their business was “wiped out overnight” in the credit crunch in 2008.
She told the court it was an extremely stressful time as her mum’s condition deteriorated and their home was repossessed.
Hillier said: “Our home, everything we worked for had now gone.”
She said her husband got a job in Spain trying to pay off their debts and she moved abroad to support him, but this failed and she moved back home.
She said: “I always intended to pay it back. I’m truly sorry that I have let down the one person who trusted me the most.”
Recorder Ainsworth said Hillier was not necessarily enjoying “high living” with her mum’s money.
He said: “I accept there has been no extravagant lifestyle in this case, rather Mrs Hillier has found herself in difficult circumstances and perhaps naively, certainly dishonestly, tried to get out of it.
“She plainly found herself in frankly a very precarious state but of course the one thing she should not have done, no matter how desperate the situation might have been, is resort to her mother’s bank account to fund her own expenses because to do so was to breach the high degree of trust placed in her by her mother.”
Jailing Hillier for 20 months, the judge said it was a tragic tale “with no winners or losers”.
Source: http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/
