Nanny who shook baby to death is jailed for 4 years
AN UNQUALIFIED Hungarian nanny paid £3.60 an hour wept yesterday as she was jailed for four years for shaking a ten-month-old baby to death in a ‘moment of madness’.
Viktoria Tautz, 34, claimed Joshua Paul had died following a game of ‘horsey’.
But yesterday she was convicted of killing the infant in a fit of temper less than hour into her shift during her first job as a child- minder. Tautz, who was hired through babysitting website Childcare. co. uk, ‘snapped’ and shook Joshua with such force she caused severe swelling and bleeding in his brain and eyes, as well as bruising to his spinal cord.
Afterwards she desperately tried to resuscitate him, screaming ‘help’ before para- medics arrived at the scene just after 9am on August 29, 2014. The infant suffered three cardiac arrests before dying in his parents’ arms at London’s Great Ormond Street Hospital two days later.
Yesterday a judge said Tautz had lost her temper just moments after being left in charge of the infant, adding: ‘You were not in the same position as a single mother in the middle of the night on her own trapped in a flat with nobody to help her.’
The Old Bailey heard that Joshua’s parents, Pearl Paul and Nirmal Vijayan, were ‘ very happy’ with Tautz after employing her to look after their only child when Miss Paul decided to return to work.
The couple, who had previously struggled to find a nanny they were happy with, were impressed by her ‘soft and engaging’ manner, which had drawn smiles from Joshua.
They had checked her references, which stated she was ‘good with children’, despite her very limited training.
Joshua was being monitored by North Middlesex Hospital after being born three months premature with two holes in
‘Limited training’
his heart and weighing just 3.74lbs. Doctors were investigating fluid on his brain and the large size of his head.
But after two months his parents were allowed to take him home after being warned they should go back to hospital if there were any changes in his behaviour.
Defending the nanny, Bernard Richmond QC said: ‘She was a young woman with a very limited amount of training with a baby who had obviously very difficult needs.’
He added: ‘She was not fully qualified and ultimately her pay reflected her degree of training.’
Tautz was found guilty of manslaughter by the Old Bailey jury, who took nearly seven hours to reach a majority verdict.