Mother found guilty of breaking daughter’s ankles

EDMONTON An Edmonton mother who intentionally broke both ankles of her two-year-old daughter and failed to seek medical attention has been found guilty of assault causing bodily harm, aggravated assault and failing to provide the necessities of life.

The woman, who cannot be named because of a publication ban, was also found guilty of intentionally fracturing her daughter’s left arm up to eight weeks prior.

Court of Queen’s Bench Justice Wayne Renke found beyond reasonable doubt the woman — who was 22 years old at the time — had applied force to the child’s legs “sufficient to break both her ankles.”

In a voluminous written decision published late last month, Renke concluded that the woman must have been aware of the excruciating pain her child was in and must have been aware of the swelling and bruising to her ankles and yet she still failed to take her to a doctor or emergency room.

The child was finally taken to hospital five days later. The court documents refer to the child only as A.B.

“(She) knew or should have known that by failing to get medical attention for A.B. she was not only prolonging A.B.’s pain and misery, she was putting her health and future mobility at risk,” Renke wrote.

The mother’s “failure to obtain medical attention for A.B. was not simply an error of judgment, carelessness, or thoughtlessness,” Renke wrote.

“It was not simply conduct that failed to meet the standard of a reasonably prudent parent, but conduct that fell so far short of meeting the standard of the reasonably prudent parent that it was morally blameworthy, meriting criminal punishment,” he wrote.

A trial began last September and lasted for 13 days. A written decision was published late last month.

During the trial, the mother said that she believed the injuries were from when A.B. fell off the toilet seat onto the floor as she was readying for a bath in March 2016.

The mother said she managed to prevent her daughter’s head from hitting the floor but that her left foot hit a plastic garbage pail near the toilet during the fall and that she landed “like a frog” and that “both ankles hit the floor really hard.”

The woman has yet to be sentenced.