A YOUNG mum caught dealing drugs in Town Gardens was on bail after being found in a house where crack was being prepared for sale.

Bianca-Lee Read had thousands of pounds worth of heroin and cocaine which was being sold to users in the Old Town beauty spot.

But after hearing the petite 20-year-old hadn’t realised what she was accepting when she was offered £100 a day to ‘count money’ a judge spared her jail.

Colin Meeke, prosecuting, told Swindon Crown Court police raided a house in Thorney Park, Wroughton, in July 2017 after reports of it being cuckooed.

In an upstairs bedroom they found the defendant with hundreds of pounds in cash and 83 wraps of cocaine, each worth £10.

Her mobile phone was examined and he said it was found to have messages indicating she had been involved in cutting and packaging the drugs.

She was released under investigation but came to the attention of the police on September 21 when they carried out an operation in Town Gardens.

Two officers went to the park and close to the bowling green spotted a group of users in what they thought was a ‘shopping exercise’.

Read turned up and after she was arrested she was found to have 100 wraps of cocaine and 78 of heroin as well as another mobile phone.

Mr Meeke said that a man who was nearby had also been in the house when it was raided a few months earlier, but there was no evidence against him doing anything.

Read, of Uxbridge, West London, pleaded guilty to three counts of being concerned in the supply of drugs and one of possessing criminal property.

Michael Hillman, defending, said his client was only 18 at the time of the offending and is now the mother of a six-month old daughter.

She had been living in a YMCA after her mother returned to South Africa when she was 15 and her uncle, her only real male role model, died when she was 16.

He said she was bullied there and when a man came along it was easy for him to recruit her.

“He asked would she like to earn £100 a day counting money. As she said today: what teenager wouldn’t like that proposition? She had no idea what she was letting herself in for.”

He said “She was in my submission impressionable, suggestive and naive. She was vulnerable. Nothing more than a child. The sort of person recruited by the hardened drugs supplier.”

After he first arrest he said she felt she had to carry on as they were putting pressure on her to pay back what had been seized.

Passing sentence Judge Peter Crabtree said that because of the changes in her life since the offences almost two years ago he could take an exceptional step.

He imposed a two-year jail term suspended for 24 months with 15 days of rehabilitation activity requirement and 200 hours of unpaid work.