LONDON: A British judge on Tuesday ordered the hospitalization of a depressed South African woman who smothered her three young disabled children as they slept before attempting suicide.

Tania Clarence, 43, had pleaded guilty to manslaughter by diminished responsibility of her three-year-old twins Ben and Max and four-year-old daughter Olivia in April.

Prosecutors had asked for her to be sent to prison. Judge Nigel Sweeney said there was “clear and convincing” evidence that she was suffering a “major depressive episode” when she suffocated them at the family home in London.

“The prosecution accept that you loved all four of your children,” he told the Old Bailey court, but said she became “overwhelmed” by the challenge of looking after them.

Quoting a psychiatrist, the judge told Clarence: “If you had not been suffering from mental illness at the time, you would not have killed your children.” Prosecutors had argued that the pre-meditated nature of the killings and Clarence’s failure to address her mental health problems meant that “her responsibility remains considerable.”

The three dead children suffered from a life-limiting, muscle-weakening condition, spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) type 2, and were in and out of hospital.

Clarence and her husband Gary, an investment banker, also had another daughter aged eight, who is not disabled.

He and the child were on holiday in South Africa at the time of the killings. He has supported his wife throughout the court proceedings.