Posed as nurse

The mother, who posed as a qualified nurse, arranged for her son to meet Lady Camilla Parker Bowles because of his "illness", while Simon Cowell was so moved by a letter outlining his plight he sent them tickets to the X Factor, reported the Daily Mail.

He appeared on national television and in magazines, while his school spent thousands of pounds adapting the building for his wheelchair.

Police said his bedroom had a specialist bed, medical equipment and boxes of liquid food.

The woman invented so many false symptoms from an early age that doctors regularly fed him through a tube, and were eventually forced to operate in a bid to find a mystery illness which didn't exist.

His condition was thought to be so rare that doctors eventually fitted him with a permanent feeding tube. He was fed through a food pump he had to wheel around behind him.

She fabricated many symptoms of illnesses over a 61/2-year period following the child's birth in 2001 that the boy spent at least six weeks a year in hospital.

In a search of her home in Devon, police found a video of the boy running on a beach "without a tube in sight".

An investigator said the mother often wore a nurse's uniform when "caring" for the boy at home, and was "very aggressive" towards consultants who disputed her claims.

On one occasion in 2007, a doctor challenged her about his condition and she accused him and other medical staff of incompetence.

She boasted of a medical background, but had no qualifications.

The woman managed to avoid detection by skipping key hospital appointments, which would have proven the child was not sick, by claiming she had been assaulted and raped.

The father of the boy was also taken in by the mother's lies and is separated from her, but still has contact with the boy.

She has admitted perverting the course of justice and child cruelty, and will be sentenced at the end of the year.

The court heard she has controlled access to her son, who did not suffer life-threatening abuse but had been "mentally traumatised" by his ordeal.

Judge Stephen Wildblood indicated the mother will face a jail term of no more than 3 years and 3 months.

This article was first published in The New Paper.