Girl describes mother beating 3-year-old

Itupa Mikaio denies causing head injuries to her 3-year-old son. Photo / Martin Sykes

A young girl has told a court she saw her 3-year-old brother thrown hard on to the floor and then beaten with a vacuum cleaner pipe by their mother, who was angry he had wet his bed.

"She chucked his head down and smacked him ... She pushed him to the floor and his head went on to the floor hard," the 9-year-old said in a video interview played yesterday in the High Court at Auckland.

Itupa Julie Mikaio, 40, faces charges of injuring with intent to cause grievous bodily harm and failing to provide a child with the necessaries of life.

The Crown alleges she got angry with son Benjamin on June 30, 2008, when he wet his bed, assaulted him and then left him for hours without medical help because she was scared to explain what had happened to him.

Prosecutor Deborah Marshall said emergency surgery saved the boy'slife but a year later he was still suffering the effects of severe head injuries.

At the start of the trial, Mikaio pleaded guilty to injuring with intent to injure after admitting she hit Benjamin's pelvis, hands, chest and buttocks with her shoe. She denies causing the head injuries.

In the second of two interviews played to the jury, the young girl said her brother "fainted" after he was hit and that she did not see him awake after that. He looked as if he was sleeping on a chair as their mother cleaned the house, she said.

Mikaio drove the children to a Samoan healer for help about 1pm, with Benjamin lying across the back seat of the van.

When the girl was asked how her brother looked, she said: "It looks like he's dead. He was closing his eyes."

Before she saw him dropped on to his head, she said, she heard her mother say,"If you piss on the bed again you're not going to sleep on it."

Under cross-examination, the girl told defence lawyer Ted Faleauto she never saw her mother hit Benjamin on the head and that she sometimes guessed when she was being spoken to about what happened because she wanted to help people.

Haini Mikaio said his wife was crying and upset when he asked her what happened to their son. "She said she had given him a smack but she didn't know how he got the head injuries."

She told him she "was naughty, very naughty".

Mr Mikaio told the court his wife admitted hitting Benjamin with her shoe because he had been "naughty and jumping up and down" and had scribbled on the wall.