I failed my son Liam but I’m no murderer, his mother tells jury
A MOTHER accused of murdering her toddler son admitted yesterday that she had ‘completely failed’ the boy.
Rachel Trelfa said her conduct had played a part in two-year-old Liam Fee’s death as she ‘should have got him help’ when she realised he had a potentially life-threatening injury.
The 31-year-old told a jury that despite suspecting her young son had a broken leg she did not seek medical advice because she was worried that social services would get involved.
Trelfa is on trial alongside her civil partner Nyomi Fee at the High Court in Livingston, where they deny murdering Liam in March 2014 and falsely blaming the toddler’s death on another boy.
The pair, originally of Ryton, Tyne and Wear, are accused of repeatedly inflicting ‘blunt force trauma’ to the youngster’s head and body.
During cross-examination yesterday, Trelfa said that she would regret the decision not to get emergency help for her injured son for the rest of her life.
And she admitted that she had even threatened to leave her co-accused if she had called an ambulance for the toddler.
Advocate depute Alex Prentice suggested she had put her own interests before those of her child. He asked her: ‘How does that square with the rights, duties and responsibilities of a mother you told us about earlier?’
She answered: ‘I completely failed Liam.’
Mr Prentice told her that Liam must have been in ‘excruciating pain’ with a broken thigh bone he sustained days before his death.
She replied: ‘I disagree slightly. When it initially happened he did cry and scream. As it went on he wasn’t in distress. He didn’t cry and scream.’
But the QC told her: ‘You knew about the leg and you knew he was at risk of dying.’
She replied: ‘It was a possibility. I should have got Liam help. I know this and it’s a decision I’ll regret for the rest of my life.’
Mr Prentice continued: ‘When it was realised by the two of you that this leg might be broken, you knew that you should take him to hospital.
‘You knew that doing nothing carried the risk of death. Tell us why as a mother you decided it was better for Liam to die, rather than ask questions about what was going on in that house.’
Trelfa answered: ‘It was the wrong decision to make. At the time I was petrified that the children were going to get taken off me. It was my paranoia.’
When asked about Liam’s short life, Trelfa told the court that she had been trying to give him ‘the best he could have’. But she then admitted her failure to protect him meant that he could not have been happy.
Mr Prentice asked: ‘Do you not think you owe it to the memory of Liam and to his dad, who is sitting in court watching you, to tell the truth about what happened to him?’ She replied: ‘Definitely, I am telling the truth.’
Giving evidence in her own defence, Trelfa revealed that
‘I should have got Liam help’ ‘You knew he was at risk of dying’
she had gone to tend her horse instead of staying at home to care for Liam on the day he died.
She said that she felt ‘really bad’ about leaving him and admitted that she had repeatedly searched Google to find out if a broken bone could cause death. She also tried to establish if married lesbians could share a cell if they were jailed for neglect.
Speaking through tears, Trelfa relived the evening when Liam was found dead in his buggy on March 22, 2014.
She said she had spent around three hours at riding stables looking after her horse before coming back to her home near Glenrothes, Fife, at around 6.20pm to have drinks and a takeaway meal with Fee. Trelfa said she felt ‘really bad’ about leaving Liam but told her defence counsel Brian McConnachie, QC, that she did not have anything to do with the child’s death.
Yet after further questioning about her refusal to take the toddler to the hospital, she admitted her conduct did play a part.
Asked where she thought Liam would be today if he had gone for medical treatment, Trelfa replied: ‘Alive.’
Mr McConnachie said: ‘I ask you again: do you think his death had anything to do with your conduct?’
She replied: ‘I should have got him help, so yes.’
Describing finding out that Liam was dead, Trelfa said that she heard Fee shouting her name repeatedly from a bedroom and ran in to see the boy ‘all white’.
Mr McConnachie asked her: ‘Can you remember how you reacted?’ She said: ‘Yes. I think I fell to the floor. He wasn’t breathing.’
Trelfa said she went to the hallway where the other child was and he put his head down. She said: ‘I knew by the look on his face he’d done something. Just done something.
‘I was feeling completely distraught, devastated. I didn’t know what was happening, didn’t know what to do – so many different emotions.’
Trelfa said that she asked the other boy what he had done, and claimed that he admitted strangling Liam.
Mr McConnachie then asked her: ‘Did you come back from your three hours at the stable and assault him [Liam] by striking him so hard that you ruptured his heart?’
She denied the allegation. The trial, before Lord Burns, continues.