Boy with autism died after "being strapped to a chair, given a cold shower and left to sleep upright in a garden shed."

His mother said she was just trying to “do the right thing.”

The boy’s parents admit they were struggling to care for him.

He would lash out, soil himself and throw himself around.

In a desperate bid to keep him under control they resorted to tying him up, restraining him in a chair with “a belt or ratchet type tie” and with packing tape and placing him the filthy garden shed to sleep upright his feet bound and tied.

There they could not hear him scream, they could not hear him lash out or struggle against the ties binding his arms to the chair.

There meters away from the home in Central West NSW, at the back of the garden he died on a cold October night in 2011.

Upright in his chair, freezing cold and bound as his mother slept through the night in their home.

This is the tragic account of the death of an 11-year old boy with autism that the Sydney District Court heard yesterday.

The 11-year-old boy’s mother, who cannot be named for legal reasons, faced Sydney’s District Court after she was charged with manslaughter following her son’s death on October 1, 2011.

The court heard that the woman and the boy’s step father were “struggling to care for the boy.”

Fairfax Media report that as a way to quieten down his behaviour the couple would dose him in cold water when he was “unsettled” and from “time to time” he was placed in the shed, with a baby monitor set up to ensure the couple could still oversee his care.

On the night the 11-year old died it was alleged he was given a cold shower by his stepfather to “snap him out of it”

Dressed in wet tracksuit pants, a T-shirt and a jumper he was tied with a rachet type tie around his waist, packing tape retrained his arms and his feet were tied to another chair.

Restrained and in dripping wet clothes he was left to sleep upright in the garden shed.

Crown prosecutor Peter McGrath SC said his mother and step father had resorted to restraining him in response to his “difficulties”, which included “throwing himself around, not sleeping and soiling himself.”

Mr McGrath said there was evidence the boy struggled against the binds and they had to be tightened. There he was left. The crown told the court that the temperature dropped to about five degrees as the boy was locked in the shed. His mother told police it was warm but it had no insulation and the heater in the shed wasn’t connected.

The crown alleges the boy died of hypothermia after being taken into a cold environment, with wet clothes on his skin and unable to get dry. The young boy, only 24 kilograms at the time of his death, had been unable to retain warmth.

The mother, whose lawyers claims she was asleep, says that her partner had responsibility for her son that night.

Though she told police that her husband came into the room where she was sleeping to tell her that he had wet the child under the shower.

“He was at the will and mercy of his mother and her husband, who was also in a position of parental responsibility to the boy,” Mr McGrath said.

Fairfax Media reports that the mother told police in a recorded interview she was always trying to do “the right thing.”

“We have had to restrain him time and time again with tape so he doesn’t get up and hurt himself. We are trying to prevent him from hurting himself.”

Mr McGrath said the couple feared the 11-year-old would harm himself had previously restrained him using plastic pipes and a sleeping bag.

The case continues.