Caregiver on trial for injuring baby
A father has described to a court the moment he found paramedics working on his pale and lifeless 6-month-old son who had been left with a professional Napier caregiver.
Paramedics were called to the caregiver’s house twice within three weeks in 2017 after she called them to say the boy had had a seizure.
On the first occasion, on January 9, the boy was rushed to Hawke’s Bay Hospital within less than three hours of being put in the woman’s care.
His condition improved and he returned home with his parents. Later in the day he deteriorated and was taken back to hospital in an ambulance.
Medical experts at the hospital believed the boy, who was pale and listless, may have had a seizure or another acute neurological event.
Eighteen days later the caregiver, aged in her 60s, rang emergency services again.
The boy was taken to hospital in a deeply unconscious state and was later transferred to Starship children’s hospital in Auckland. He was found to have suffered several injuries and underwent brain surgery.
Medical experts found that the boy had been subjected to two separate incidents that had caused extensive damage to his brain. The experts said the injuries were non-accidental, and likely to have been caused by someone shaking the boy.
The caregiver, who has name supression, said the injuries might have been caused by a fall or by being accidentally hit by his 2-year-old brother.
She was charged with two counts of causing grievous bodily harm with reckless disregard for the safety of the child and is before Judge Geoff Rea in a judgealone trial in Napier District Court.
The parents were from overseas and did not know anyone in Hawke’s Bay. Both were working professionals. The boy’s 2-yearold brother had been in the caregiver’s care for more than a year before the events.
In opening the Crown case on Monday, prosecutor Steve Manning said the parents had completely trusted the caregiver and had no reason to believe either injury had been caused by her.
The father told the court they saw the caregiver as a ‘‘mother figure’’.
He said his son had been a large baby and a happy child, but that changed after the first incident, when he rushed to the caregiver’s house to find his boy who ‘‘looked dead’’.
The sight made his legs feel lame, he said.
In the weeks after the first incident, the boy was lethargic and was not sleeping or eating normally.
‘‘It was like having a different baby all of a sudden,’’ the father said.
Retinal specialist Andrea Vincent, who saw the boy in Auckland, said he had suffered extensive retinal haemorrhages to both eyes ‘‘too numerous to count’’. That, combined with other factors made the injury ‘‘highly suggestive of abusive head trauma’’.
Paediatric radiologist Russell Metcalfe said the boy had suffered serious brain injuries similar to that suffered in a car crash and, with no other explanation for how they occurred, he was ‘‘99.999 per cent’’ certain they had been caused by an abusive head injury.
The trial is continuing.