"He will never be able to ask me for sweeties or ask for just one more bedtime story": Newry Crown Court hears heart breaking victim impact statement after young child is left with ‘life limiting’ injuries
There was heightened emotion in a tense courtroom today (Friday) as a judge heard how a little boy's injuries were so severe he will eventually die from the damage inflicted upon him.
In what is a legal first in Northern Ireland, the heart-rending Victim Impact Statement was read verbatim to the court directly from the witness box of Newry Crown Court, where the foster mum of the “very young child” laid bare the consequences of the shocking offences perpetrated by 35-year-old Christopher Fulton and his wife Amanda (36).
“If the sky were made of parchment and I were to fill it with words of how much he means to us, it would still fall short to describe the love that we have for him,” she told the court, adding that when she first saw him in hospital fighting for his life she thought, “here lay a totally innocent victim whose only crime was being born.”
The court heard during the five week trial last October how the very young victim was left blind and severely brain damaged as a result of Chris Fulton’s attack, which caused a litany of catastrophic injuries but today (Friday), the actual consequences of the couples’ actions were laid bare in stark, heart breaking terms.
Describing a life filled with medical appointments, assessments and treatments, the little boy’s foster mum told the court how he “will never see the faces of those who love him and care for him so deeply.”
“He will never see the sunrise. He will never know what the ocean looks like. He will never see the toys that Santa left for him under the tree,” she told the court but added that he is so significantly brain damaged “he wouldn't understand what they were.”
“He can only communicate his distress by crying, pulling his ears until they bleed, or banging his head with his fist and grinding his teeth. He lets me know he's happy with smiles and giggles. He will never be able to ask me for sweeties or ask for just one more bedtime story.
“I will never hear him say I love you,” she told Judge Peter Irvine KC who heard that with medicines and food being given through a tube, his birthday cakes lie untouched and “he will never experience the satisfaction that comes from being hungry and getting to eat his favourite food.”
“As a result of his injuries, I will never have the privilege of teaching him how to write his first bike. He will never be excited on Christmas Eve and wake me at 3 AM to see what Santa has left for him. He will never have the opportunity to get married and have children and grandchildren of his own. and instead, he has forever been condemned to a life of being totally dependent on his caregivers for every single aspect of daily life.”
Throughout the 15 minutes of testimony, Mrs Fulton was seen to repeatedly wipe away tears.
Mr Fulton, the man convicted of causing these heinous injuries, sat stony-faced, his arms folded, not a single flicker of emotion appearing to cross.
Not even when the little boy’s foster mum recalled that doctors had told her the bombshell news that his injuries “are life limiting” did Mr Fulton show any emotion.
At the end of the trial, the jury found Mr Fulton unanimously guilty of inflicting grievous bodily harm with intent and two charges of child cruelty by wilfully neglecting the young victim.
While Mrs Fulton was acquitted of GBH and one charge of child cruelty, she was however unanimously convicted of causing or allowing the child to suffer significant physical harm and a further charge of wilful neglect.
The court heard how the very young child was unresponsive on the morning of November 7, 2019, at Fulton’s home at Rockfield Gardens just outside Ballymoney, but despite their concerns, neither defendant called a doctor for three hours.
When the little boy was eventually seen by the GP, it was obvious to him that “he was a very sick child.”
Initially he was rushed in an ambulance to the Causeway Hospital where a scan uncovered a significant head injury and he was then taken to the Royal Belfast Hospital for Sick Children where he endured life saving brain surgery.
It was there that doctors discovered the true extent of his life threatening injuries including:
* Fractured skull with associated bleeding to the brain and retinal bleeding;
* 27 rib fractures;
* Fractures to both thigh bones;
* Fractures to both shin bones;
* Fractured wrist;
* A lacerated liver.
One paediatric consultant after another testified how the injuries were consistent with those which might be expected in a high speed car crash or being dropped “from several stories high.”
By their verdicts the jury declared they were sure that Christopher Fulton struck the boy so hard he fractured his skull and lacerated his liver, that he shook him with such ferocity that all his limbs sustained fractures and at the time he was squeezing him so hard he broke his ribs.
The jury also declared they were satisfied that it is not the first time that Fulton, a hulking 6’3” 16 stone fully grown man, compressed the little boy’s chest with such force that 12 other ribs had been broken before and were healing.
Mrs Fulton, the jury decided, did nothing to help or intervene.
Her defence SC Seamus McNeill conceded “I cannot gainsay” a suggestion by Judge Irvine that having witnessed her husband’s rough handling of the child “she was fully aware of the potential aggression that could be directed at the victim.”
He also conceded the further suggestion the judge would be “entitled to draw an inference that they concocted a lying story to the police out of self interest.”
Ken McMahon KC, acting on behalf of Mr Fulton, highlighted that he had no violent convictions in his past and also how the doctors had agreed the catastrophic injuries could have resulted from a momentary loss of anger and control.
Remanding the pair back into custody, he said he would deal with the case on April 4.