BABY Benjamin Judson's coffin was not the first to be buried empty by Co-operative Funeral Services, a former employee has revealed.

Funeral directors apologised to another set of grieving parents last year after bungling Teesside staff forgot to put a baby's body in a coffin.

The couple were put through an horrific ordeal which parallels that of the Judsons', when the tiny body of their baby was found in the mortuary after the funeral service had been held.

The grieving family did not realise they were saying their final tearful goodbyes to an empty casket and were horrified when they found out. They then had to hold a second funeral.

Now a former employee has hit out after the mistake.

"It's a disgrace," she said. "For it to happen once was bad enough but now it's happened twice - that we know of. I was absolutely gobsmacked when I heard it had happened again. There needs to be an investigation into how this was allowed to go on.

"The family in Teesside had to hold a second funeral - but at least they were given that chance, unlike poor Benjamin Judson's family."

The Press told last week how Graeme Skidmore, 44, from Leslie Way, in Dunbar, Scotland, and Mark Eshelby, 48, of Acomb, York, were sentenced at York Crown Court to 18 months in jail suspended for two years and each fined £5,000, after they pleaded guilty to conspiring to prevent the proper burial of a body. The pair were colleagues at Co-operative Funeral Services in York in 1998, when they discovered the coffin of Benjamin, who was only 20 minutes old when he died, had been buried empty.

They concealed his remains in 85-year-old Evelyn Sayner's coffin in a bid to cover up the blunder, and the two bodies were cremated together at York Crematorium.

Both families believed their loved ones had been dealt with in the way they had requested until a police investigation began earlier this year.

Like the Judsons, the family from Middlesbrough had also arranged the funeral with the Co-op and believed they had buried their child's body until they were told otherwise.

At the time a source said: "The baby was either stillborn or a few hours old. That is tragic enough. You can only imagine the family's added grief when this happened.

"The baby weighed so little that nobody realised the coffin was too light. How can you forget to put a body in a coffin? It's not as if it's a trivial part of the job."

A Co-op spokesman admitted in February 2006: "As a result of an error at our Middlesbrough branch a baby's funeral was held without the baby being present in the coffin. We immediately informed the family with our unreserved apologies and very quickly suspended the employee concerned and subsequently dismissed him."

Funeral director Mark Hunt, 44, of Egton Close, Redcar, who had been a funeral director with the North Eastern Co-operative Funeral Service for 20 years, was sacked following the incident and lodged an appeal against his dismissal.

No one from Co-operative Funeral services was available for comment over the weekend.