The baby was 7-11 weeks old at the time of the violence.
Western Uusimaa the district court has sentenced parents under thirty to absolute prison terms for violence against a small baby. The baby's condition came to light when the parents took the baby to the hospital in November last year. Nurses who testified in court said they soon noticed that the baby was unresponsive and had external injuries.
The baby received emergency treatment, but his condition collapsed. He was then taken to another hospital for emergency surgery.
“The baby's injuries had been life-threatening. If the child had not undergone emergency surgery, he would have died,” the verdict says.
Judgment according to the nursing staff tried to ask the parents what had happened to the baby. The witness said that the parents were alarmed, but they had not received a clear reason for the baby's injuries. Both denied the charges in court.
Among other things, the child was found to have several skull fractures, internal bleeding and several bone fractures. Some of the injuries were older and some were recent. They were considered to have been born when the baby was between 7 and 11 weeks old. The court considered that the injuries had been caused by shaking, squeezing and blows or punches.
Both the parents were convicted of previous gross abuse of the baby.
“During the act, the 7-11-week-old baby has been subjected to repeated violence by his own parents, resulting in serious injuries. It is clear that a child of this age has been completely defenseless and dependent on the nurturing and care of his parents,” the judgment says.
The prosecutor demanded that the mother be punished for attempted murder due to the violence before going to the hospital. However, the court considered that the act was not an attempted murder, as the child had been brought to the hospital.
“This has been done before the crime has come to the attention of the police or outsiders, and [äidin] must be considered to have prevented the death of his child by taking his child to the hospital.”
The mother's act was considered gross assault.
In the district court we went through the baby's consultation visits. The court heard the health nurse of the health center, who had last met the mother and family only days before the baby was brought to the hospital. During the visit, the nurse said that she had weighed the child without clothes, and she hadn't noticed anything unusual.
The court considered that the baby's ribs had been broken even a month before being brought to the hospital and that by the time of the last consultation they had relatively healed.
The verdict shows that the baby had been to counseling even when the fractures were still fresh. The records of the consultation visit that took place about two weeks before going to the hospital stated that the child was “so tearful that it was not possible to examine the child”.
Prosecutor requested at the trial that the mother be subjected to a mental state examination. It was supported, among other things, by the concern about the mother's ability to understand that arose earlier in the counseling session. According to the verdict, the family had been offered help with family work, which they had refused.
However, the court considered that there was nothing in the woman's state of health that would give reason to doubt her culpability. According to the expert's assessment, the violence considered as the cause was particularly exceptional in its seriousness, but according to the court, there was no reason to consider the mother psychotic or otherwise incapable of understanding the consequences of her actions or her actions. The woman herself objected to the investigation.
The baby's 27-year-old mother was sentenced to three years and ten months in prison, and the 28-year-old father to two and a half years in prison.
STT does not publish the names of the convicted to protect the child's privacy.
Correction 21.2. 10:38 p.m.: Contrary to what was erroneously stated in the story's title earlier, the court did not deal with the charge of murder, but of attempted murder.
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