A FUNERAL director who brought the bodies of babies home says she wanted to make sure they were “never alone” and read them stories.
Amie Upton, 38, has been accused by heartbroken mums of bringing babies home with her instead of to a funeral parlour to await burial.
Upton said she was ‘heartbroken’ by the shocking claims[/caption]
Zoe Ward, 32, screamed in horror after finding her dead son and the body of another tragic tot “in front of the TV” in Upton’s living room.
She was “terrified” to see Upton “watching cartoons” with her son’s body next to her in the living room in a baby bouncer.
Another mum, Cody Townsend, told how she found her stillborn baby “deteriorated” on Upton’s sofa because she wasn’t put in a cold cot.
But Upton, who set up Florrie’s Army after her own daughter died, said she was “heartbroken” by the claims.
Breaking down in tears, she told The Mirror that she “just wanted to help” the families.
Upton said: “I know here the babies were never left alone. I was always here.
“They were always clean and tidy and were not deteriorating or smelly as claimed on posts I’ve seen today.
“The babies here were not put in a fridge when staff go home but I was here all the time. Their babies knew nothing but love.
“You don’t find nurses reading their babies a story. I would. I know I only ever did my best. It is ridiculous.”
She went on to refute Zoe’s claims that her son was left in a baby bouncer.
Upton claimed she had been transferring Bleu in a “laid back chair” before they moved him to a bed.
The funeral director also spoke about the tragedy surrounding the death of her own daughter, Florence, who was stillborn at 29 weeks.
Upton says she lost her unborn baby after her abusive partner repeatedly rammed a child’s buggy into her.
The attack caused her tummy to crash into the corner of an open freezer door.
Her attacker and the baby’s father, Shaun Birchall, pleaded guilty to grievous bodily harm.
Birchall was jailed for two years in April 2021.
On her Facebook, Upton says she wants to be Florrie’s “legacy and voice”.
A post read: “You live on in me so I’ve made the choice to honour your life by living again.”
Bleu’s body was picked up from the hospital by someone on behalf of Florrie’s Army, according to Zoe.
She added she had thought her son would be in a “professional setting” but was “terrified” to see Upton “watching cartoons” with her son’s body next to her.
Zoe told the BBC: “I realised it were Bleu and [Upton] says: ‘Come in, we’re watching PJ Masks.’
“There’s a cat scratcher in the corner and I can hear a dog barking and there was another [dead] baby on the sofa. It wasn’t a nice sight.
“I rang my mum and I’m saying, ‘This ain’t right’… I was screaming down the phone [saying]: ‘It’s mucky, it’s dirty, he can’t stay here’.”
Zoe’s mum then organised for another funeral director to collect Bleu’s body and he was taken out of Upton’s care.
Zoe said: “I didn’t want him in that house,” adding she had been left “upset and angry” following the “weird” experience.
Upton, 38, has now been banned from NHS maternity wards and mortuaries in Leeds.
The funeral director claimed she had only ever had two complaints in her eight years of running Florrie’s Army.
In England and Wales, the funeral industry is unregulated.
There are no legal requirements regarding how and where bodies should be stored.
No qualifications are needed to set up as a funeral director.
A couple, named only by their aliases of Sharon and Paul, were introduced to Upton by a family friend.
Their daughter was stillborn at St James’ hospital, also in Leeds, earlier this year.
The pair agreed to let Florrie’s Army take their daughter as Upton led them to believe the body was being kept at a funeral parlour.
After more than a week, though, Upton told them their daughter was at her house, five miles away from the parlour in Headingley.
They said they had not given their consent for her to be taken there.
Sharon said: “I just didn’t know why she was there.”
The couple said they do not know how long their daughter’s body had been kept at Upton’s home.
They believe it had not been kept at the correct temperature, saying it was “really smelly, like she’d been in there and not kept cool”.
The funeral director claims she had only ever had two complaints in her eight years of running Florrie’s Army[/caption]