THE adoptive grandmother of tragic Midland tot Christian Blewitt has spoken out against her son's conviction for his manslaughter. Ian Gay and his wife Angela were each jailed for five years earlier this month for killing the three year-old after forcing him to eat salt. The wealthy Midlands couple are appealing against the sentence - and Ian's mum Jacqueline Gay is backing their fight. She claimed: "All they ever wanted was to give a home to three lovely children. They adored all of them from the moment they met them. "This has been a miscarriage of justice of the most appalling kind." Sandwell Social Services had placed Christian in the care of the couple, along with his two younger siblings, in December 2002. They planned to formerly adopt the three youngsters and had bought a new £500,000 house in Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, for their new family to live. But within five weeks of the placement, Christian was dead. Jacqueline, 58, from Brierley Hill in the West Midlands, said: "They were ecstatic when they found out the children were coming to stay with them. "They had visited them earlier on several occasions and thought they were wonderful. "Ian and Angela brought them round to see me a few times. They were three happy little things. "The first time they were very shy, but by the end of the day Christian had called me Nan. "They were a normal happy family before all this happened, planning for their first Christmas together. "Ian and Angela had already been looking for what presents to buy for them all and Christian had helped Ian to decorate their Christmas tree." She added: "They have lost Christian and had the two other children taken from them and are devastated at their loss. "They weren't allowed to go to the funeral and have never had a chance to grieve." A court heard that tests showed Christian died of brain damage as he had the equivalent of four teaspoons of salt in his bloodstream - the highest level doctors had seen. Sentencing the pair at Worcester Crown Court, judge Mr Justice Pitchers said: "On the final weekend the child had shown real wilful behaviour and refused to eat properly. You decided to punish him by making him eat salt. "You knew it would cause him discomfort - not that it would prove fatal, but tragically it did." But divorced Jacqueline, who works in a call centre, denied engineer Ian and insurance actuary Angela had forced the tot to eat salt as a punishment. She said: "How do you get a three-and-a-half year-old to eat or drink something they don't like - never mind about salt. The only punishment they made Christian do was sit in a corner on his own for a few minutes, this is what Social Services had advised them to do should the children misbehave." The couple were also criticised because a week after Christian arrived into their care Ian, 37, had described the youngster as 'brainless' and a 'vegetable'. But Jacqueline insisted Ian told her this was how Christian behaved on one particular occasion only and that he was scared the boy may be ill in some way. She added her son and daughter-in-law were devastated at the verdict and angry with the justice system. She said: "I have visited Ian once since their sentence and he and and Angela are shocked and bewildered that this has happened to them. "They were devastated when they were arrested at the hospital, days after Ian brought Christian for medical attention. Up until that point they believed the little boy was going to get better." fionnuala_bourke@mrn.co.uk | 
