A pregnant single mother scarred her two-year-old daughter for life after burning her hand.

The 21-year-old was living with her mother on an Oxford estate when the little girl was rushed to the Accident and Emergency ward of the John Radcliffe Hospital on New Year's Eve last year.

Nigel Daly, prosecuting, told Oxford Crown Court that the toddler had a severe burn on her right hand. The mother told staff it happened when she put her hand into the fire to retrieve a piece of jigsaw she had dropped into it.

The girl was immediately transferred to the Radcliffe Infirmary in Woodstock Road so she could be treated by a plastic surgeon.

Mr Daly told the court that the mother, who cannot be named for legal reasons, kept to the same story but the doctor was surprised because the burns were so serious and only in the centre of the hand. The woman then changed her story to say she lit the gas rings on the cooker to warm the room, and left her child in the kitchen playing with a ball. She burned herself as she reached to get the ball off the cooker. The mother was arrested a few days later and changed her account again to say that she may have injured her daughter but couldn't remember how she did it.

Mr Daly said she told police that she was afraid her child, who is now on a child protection register, would be taken away from her if she told the truth and that she had made up stories hundreds of times and got away with it.

He added that the little girl, who is now living with her grandmother, may never be able to bend her fingers properly and would be permanently scarred.

The mother, who pleaded guilty to causing her child grievous bodily harm, had been referred to a hospital in London by her GP in May 1997 as he was concerned that she might have Munchausen's syndrome and could harm her child.

Mr Daly told the court that the defendant took her daughter to hospital on a number of occasions making various claims each time that the girl had abdominal pain, had stopped breathing, had vomited blood, had broken a leg, had kidney failure and sickle cell anaemia.

None of this was true as well as claims about herself that she had been to the funeral of another child of hers and that she had another daughter.

Mr Daly said "There is some evidence of Munchausen's syndrome and Munchausen's by proxy."

Nicholas Syfret, defending, told the court that his client, who had no previous convictions, had little recollection of what happened but "accepts she did this terrible act".

He said: "This is an absolutely tragic case. This is a young woman who suffers from a severe personality disorder."

Judge Anthony King adjourned sentence for a week while an addition is made to a psychiatric report which has already been prepared.

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