The girl was just five days past her 13th birthday

Close to tears she said her daughter would be dead were it not for the skill of the hospital doctors.

The woman, who cannot be named, said the court of appeal should look again at the punishments imposed on Friday.

Two Wrexham men, aged 21 and 20, were sentenced to 15 months in custody after admitting supplying the drug.

The mother-of-three said she was not being critical of the judge because he was working within set guidelines.

But she said the 15-month sentences did not seem much in view of what could have happened to her daughter.

She said the nightmare started one Saturday night in January when there was a knock on the door.

Two police officers asked her if she had a daughter, said she was in hospital, and it was believed that she had taken ecstasy.

Leah Betts

"I really cannot tell you the things that were going through my head," she explained.

"When we got to the hospital, we were put in a room and I was very near hysterical by that time.

"I was shaking from head to toe and my head was throbbing. I felt physically sick.

"They told us that they were trying to stabilise her. Her heart rate was very, very quick but that was all they could tell us until the doctors came out."

She could not get this picture of Leah Betts out of her mind

She said she wept when she saw her daughter surrounded by machines and tubes coming out of her in Wrexham Maelor Hospital - and the unforgetable photograph of Leah Betts flashed before her eyes.

"There is no doubt about it, she could have died. We were told that at one point she had stopped breathing before she was put on a ventilator.

"It was the skill of the doctors that kept her alive. We are very grateful to them and the police."

Her daughter suffered fits as she recovered but has not had any since.

"The judge said that it was every parent's worst nightmare and he is so right. It was a horrible, horrible feeling at the time," she said.

Horrified

She said children had to realise that just one ecstasy tablet could be one too many - that it could be their first and their last.

"It has got to be drummed in to their heads that ecstasy, that any drug, is so dangerous," she said.

"We can't expect parents to wrap their children up in cotton wool all the time.

"They have got to have a certain amount of freedom but they have got to be made aware of the very real dangers of drugs and that it could happen to them."

She says that the court of appeal should look again at the sort of sentences imposed where drugs prove fatal or cause serious injury.

She described her daughter as a nice, sensible child but said she was horrified that she had taken an ecstasy tablet.

"She was five days past her 13th birthday, just a child. It was more than peer pressure. She was given ecstasy by people old enough to know better.