A WOMAN has been jailed for 18 months for attacking her seven-year-old stepdaughter and then attempting to lay the blame on others, including her cousin.

The 25-year-old Bradford woman tipped the child out of bed and squeezed her throat in a terrifying assault at her home in November last year.

The girl suffered 34 separate injuries, including bruising, scratches and grazing on her face, body and limbs, Bradford Crown Court heard yesterday.

The woman, who cannot be named to protect the identity of the child, was led weeping to the cells after Judge Jonathan Rose told her he would be failing in his public duty to protect children if he did not lock her up.

She pleaded guilty to causing the child actual bodily harm and attempting to pervert the course of justice after trying to implicate the little girl’s brother and then her own entirely innocent cousin in the attack.

Prosecutor Ken Green told the court that teachers at the girl’s primary school alerted social services after she told them her stepmother had “tried to kill her the previous night”.

The police were called when the woman turned up at the school “upset and irate”.

She claimed the child had been fighting with her brother and that she had fallen out of bed.

A paediatric doctor who examined the girl said she was the victim of “a sustained physical assault.”

The child said the woman had tried to strangle her after hitting and punching her.

While on bail, the woman put messages on a police web chat site, purporting to be from her cousin, and supposedly confessing to the assault.

She also blamed her cousin’s daughter for the attack.

Even after the police had visited her cousin, and found her wholly innocent of any wrongdoing, the woman continued to place the messages on the police web chat site, said Mr Green.

“It was a sustained attempt to pervert the course of justice,” he said.

In April, the woman contacted the police and admitted what she had done.

In mitigation, her barrister, Rebecca Young, said: “This is clearly a very troubling case and tragic for all parties involved.”

The woman’s natural children had been taken from her and were being fostered.

She had no previous convictions and had herself been abused when she was a child.

“She is wracked with guilt and shame. She cannot believe the extent of the violence and the injuries caused,” Miss Young said.

The offences had pulled the family apart and the woman’s marriage had broken down.

She lied to the police after panicking and she did not think of the consequences of implicating others in the assault.

Judge Rose noted that the woman had a difficult childhood and had suffered from depression but she had subjected the girl to a "terrifying" sustained and repeated assault.

“You tipped her up from her bed, placed your hands around her throat and applied pressure. It must have been utterly terrifying for her,” Judge Rose said.

The woman then hatched an elaborate plan to implicate her cousin.

“Those who seek to undermine the justice system of this country will go to prison,” he told her.