AN UNSTABLE and unpredictable mum who spent months systematically bullying her disabled daughter was described as manipulative by a Swindon judge.

Jackie Williams was said to have controlled almost every aspect of her grown-up daughter’s life, telling her what to wear, stopping her from taking a prescription for depression, using disability benefits to buy clothes online, setting up online dating profiles and peppering her with texts when she went to meet friends.

The 54-year-old would rant at her daughter, who suffers from cerebral palsy, if the young woman did not do what she wanted. On one occasion, she even wiped dirty underwear on her girl’s arm in an effort to humiliate her.

In a victim impact statement, Williams’ daughter said the campaign of abuse had left her with low self-esteem.

Describing her mother as unstable and unpredictable, the now 23-year-old woman said her life had changed for the better since moving away from the family home: “I feel I can just be myself and being myself isn’t something I should be ashamed of, even though she made me feel that way every single day.”

Williams, of Ratcoombe Road, Peatmoor, had previously pleaded guilty to engaging in coercive and controlling behaviour over a period of 15 months between 2015 and 2017.

Defending, Rob Ross said: “Caring – loving – can become burdensome, overbearing and all-encompassing suffocation. That’s what we’ve got here. Often, the last person to realise that is the perpetrator.”

He asked the judge to make a mental health treatment order, saying his client suffered from mental health problems including severe anxiety and depression.

Williams was sentenced to 17 months imprisonment suspended for two years and ordered to complete a six-month mental health treatment programme with the probation service. A restraining order bans her from contacting her daughter for five years.

Describing Williams as manipulative, Judge Jason Taylor QC said: “You are not the victim. You are not the tiring carer with an ungrateful child. And you are not the mother you want the world to see.”

He added: “You should have nurtured. You undermined. You made her feel worthless.”

Reacting to the sentence, Wiltshire Police’s Micheala Gunn said: “This has been a lengthy and very difficult case for the victim, who has shown amazing courage throughout the whole process considering the turmoil that she has been subjected to.

“Controlling and coercive behaviour is still a relatively new offence, but it can have a really devastating impact on those involved.

“The result in court was an important one, not only for the victim, but for anyone else who might be going through something similar and does not feel strong enough to come forward and report their ordeal to police.”