A woman who left her two-year-old son penned in the kitchen of her flat while she went off to spend the weekend with her boyfriend could only be identified as the child’s mother after a judge changed a reporting restriction order.

The child was covered by an anonymity order under section 39 of the Children and Young Persons Act 1933 which meant the media could only report that the 22-year-old had left a child in the kitchen – which subsequently flooded – of a flat.

The Press Association applied for the reporting restriction to be lifted, arguing that the child was too young to be affected by publicity about the case.

Later, after she was convicted, the judge agreed to a fresh application – this time by the Lincolnshire Echo – to amend the order so that she could be identified as the child’s mother.

So it was only after a jury at Lincoln Crown Court convicted her of a charge of child cruelty by way of neglect, one of child cruelty by way of abandonment and one of perverting the course of justice that the judge, Recorder William Harbage QC, agreed to amend the order so that Tollerton could be identified as the child’s mother, although the toddler could not be named or his photograph published.