Baby suffered broken legs and ribs at hands of father

While the 37-year-old was jailed for the repugnant way he handled his vulnerable son, his 40-year-old wife escaped going to prison after Judge Gordon Kerr QC suspended her three month prison sentence for a year.

At an earlier hearing the father entered a guilty plea to causing grievous bodily harm to his baby son between 25 February and 1 April 2016 and his wife admitted a charge of “causing or allowing” her child to suffer serious physical harm between the same dates.

Sentencing the Co. Armagh couple at Newry Crown Court, Judge Kerr said given the background circumstances “there are few injured parties who are more vulnerable than a five week old baby.”

“The effects of his behaviour have ramifications for the family unit as a whole, including the other child, who is now no longer in the family he could have anticipated,” said the judge who added “the ramifications just don’t end with the actual injuries or direct mental consequences of injuries.”

In an agreed statement of facts prosecuting QC Neil Conor told the court how the couple, who cannot be identified to protect their children, arrived with their baby at Craigavon Area Hospital in the early hours of 31 March 2016.

“Medical staff readily identified a left femoral fracture and other bruising and marks in conjunction with the fracture, led to the suspicion of non-accidental injury,” said the lawyer adding that the baby was then transferred to the Royal Belfast hospital for sick children and the authorities alerted.

When the infant was examined, a consultant paediatric radiologist “identified 17 fractures of varying ages” and while the leg break was 7-10 days old, she also identified “nine healing anterior and posterior rib fractures and corner fractures of the distal right femur, proximal right tibia, distal right tibia, distal left femur, proximal left tibia and fibula and the distal left tibia.”

The radiologist, said Mr Connor, described some of the fractures as “ recent” and others as “healing” but that “none of the injuries were as old as five weeks and therefore none of the injuries could be described as birth injuries.”

Arrested and interviewed, the baby’s father claimed that the night before the hospital admission, he had been carrying his son when he tripped and may have inadvertently “squished” him but he noticed his left leg was limp when he add changing his nappy.

His wife said she had contacted the out of hours GP service when her husband drew her attention to her son’s leg but apart from that, “as far as she was concerned, her son was a healthy baby” and she was adamant that “she had not caused the injuries and had no knowledge of any injury until the night before his presentation at hospital.”

Mr Connor said the husband’s guilty plea to GBH was accepted in that “against a background of mounting difficulty and frustration in looking after a new-born baby, he roughly handled his son on occasions, to the extent that he was responsible for the injuries sustained.”

His wife’s admission was that “she failed to protect her son from the foreseen risk of serious physical harm and did not seek medical attention for him sufficiently swiftly when he would have been in evident pain.”

Defence QC Alan Kane submitted that the father “has lost everything..he has lost his family…he has lost his marriage, he has lost the entirety of everything that he had and looked forward to from the day that he brought home his young child from that hospital with his wife, whom he loved in a perfectly stable and loving marriage, and now that has all been blown away by his acts.”

As Judge Kerr announced the 18 month sentence, split 50/50 between custody and licence, he showed little emotion but simply reached for his hold-all bag which was taken by a prison officer as the 37-year-old was handcuffed and led to the cells.