Woman is guilty of killing her newborn
A WOMAN who left her newborn baby in a bin in a medical centre has been found guilty of manslaughter.
The woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was found unanimously guilty of manslaughter and child neglect in 2018 at the Caredoc medical centre on the Cork Road in Waterford.
It took a jury of eight men and four women at Waterford Circuit Criminal Court three and a half hours to deliver a guilty verdict yesterday evening.
The court had heard that the accused woman went to Caredoc with her mother and grandmother. CCTV evidence showed that the accused was only in the toilet for 13 minutes, and within that time she gave birth and the baby was placed in a metal bin with bloody tissues over her.
The woman pleaded not guilty when arraigned last week to a charge of manslaughter and also denied a charge of child neglect on the same date.
During interviews with gardaí, the woman agreed that when the baby was born and dropped into the toilet, the infant was still attached to her.
The defendant accepted that she picked the baby up, held her in her left hand, saw her face
Case described as ‘unhappy and tragic’
and determined the sex of the baby.
When asked if the baby squealed or cried, she said: ‘Nothing.’
The woman said that when she held the baby in her arms, couldn’t describe her feelings.
The court heard that she held her for about ten minutes to ‘see if there was anything, but no, there was nothing’.
Asked why she didn’t seek help, she said: ‘Because I didn’t want it. I never needed help. I always done everything by myself.’
Details of the postmortem were read out to her which showed the cause of death as being inattention at birth. She agreed that it was fair to say that if she screamed for help the baby would be here today.
Ciaran O’Loughlin SC, defending, described the case as an ‘unhappy and tragic’ one.
Judge Eugene O’Kelly instructed the jury to concentrate on what occurred at the Caredoc office, explaining that the allegations centred on the actions of the accused. He told the jury to leave emotions to one side and deal with the evidence in a cold and clinical way. January 11 has been set as the sentencing date.