The baby was flown to Starship Hospital with injuries from blunt force trauma. Photo / 123rf
A mother who caused catastrophic brain damage to her infant son has been condemned by a judge for a pattern of “constant and continued lies” that clouded the truth of what happened.
The 29-year-old, who cannot be named to protect the identity of the child, was sentenced to four-and-a-half years in prison after claiming she had merely shaken the baby to wake him.
“You stole from him his very future. Everything he could have been, everything he could have achieved, everything he could have experienced is now and forever taken from him,” Judge Gene Tomlinson told the woman.
He was also scathing of her account of what happened.
“What you said and did, and what actually happened to your son, is unknowingly opaque because of your constant and, in my assessment, continued lies,” he said.
After charges were laid in 2020, the woman went to trial twice for one charge of wounding with reckless disregard after the incident that left her baby brain-damaged in 2019.
At her first trial and while she was under cross-examination, the trial had to be aborted as she was having complications with her current pregnancy.
Her second trial began in February this year at the Whangārei District Court where a jury found her unanimously guilty.
The jury heard evidence that when the woman and her husband arrived at the Bay of Islands hospital with the baby on July 1, 2019, she said the baby had gone limp and she tried to resuscitate him by performing CPR.
But following extensive tests at Auckland’s Starship hospital, it was revealed the child had suffered a brain bleed, torn veins and hypoxic brain damage only sustainable from blunt force trauma.
Over the following year, police investigated the child’s injuries, and the mother gave three police interviews.
In one interview, she said the baby had fallen out of a bouncer the day before he became unresponsive and she had found him face down on the floor.
She told police she believed the baby had pushed his way backwards.
But as he was born premature and still the size of a 6-week-old, Detective Sergeant Natalie Syddall believed this was physically impossible.
The woman then gave another statement that, after her husband left for work, she had fed the baby and he went limp in her arms, and his eyes began to close slowly.
She said she shook the boy non-violently to wake him and then performed CPR.
The woman’s past was presented to the court which revealed she had previously lost a baby under similar circumstances, with the mother claiming he went stiff in her arms and died.
At the trial, the woman gave evidence her current baby had also become stiff, not limp like she previously stated.
The woman was sentenced in May but NZME has only recently received the sentencing notes.
In them, Judge Tomlinson said the lies began the moment the baby was injured and continued right through until the mother gave testimony in court.
He said this was a particularly egregious moment in the trial in that she changed her account of events under oath.
“You lied so often and so much about what you did to [name suppressed] and what happened to him, I am not at all satisfied I could accept anything you had to say,” Judge Tomlinson said.
“To use one child’s death to seek to absolve yourself of causing serious injuries to another is inexcusable.
“It was a cynical and deliberate lie by you and I suspect, one of the reasons the jury were able to conclude you were not telling the truth.”
Judge Tomlinson described the baby’s injuries as “disturbingly heartbreaking,” noting he had suffered trauma that led to oxygen deprivation and the death of a significant portion of his brain.
“He is, as a consequence of your reckless actions, denied even the basic human joy of tasting food.”
In a pre-sentence report submitted to the court, the woman claimed her husband continued to be her strongest support but Judge Tomlinson noted, he has not been present at any of her court hearings.
“I question that. He is not here today. Your evidence at trial left me to question the degree of support that he provided for you,” Judge Tomlinson said.
Defence lawyer Jarred Scott submitted the woman had done everything she could to get the child help and it was therefore not deliberate concealment.
The judge disagreed.
“Whilst you took him to the hospital, you then told different stories at different times,” Judge Tomlinson said.
“As your stories fell apart, or as they did not match the injuries that were located, your story changed.
“You lied and you developed more lies and as your story did not pan out, you continued to conceal what you had done. To this day you continue to deny what you had done.”
The woman was sentenced to four-and-a-half years’ imprisonment.
Shannon Pitman is a Whangārei-based reporter for Open Justice covering courts in the Te Tai Tokerau region. She is of Ngāpuhi/Ngāti Pūkenga descent and has worked in digital media for the past five years. She joined NZME in 2023.