The premature baby was six months old when he was carried with his head and neck unsupported. Photo / 123rf
The premature baby was six months old when he was carried with his head and neck unsupported. Photo / 123rf
A young mum who inadvertently injured her baby in her panic to save his life when he stopped breathing, was hauled to court, charged with a criminal offence, and put under intense scrutiny by child protection services.
After a two-year ordeal, a High Court judge has now cleared her name.
The mother-of-two, whose identity is protected, walked out of the High Court at Auckland this morning in tears, free to parent her children unsupervised after she was discharged without conviction.
"You had to see [your baby] in pain and come to terms with the fact that you caused his injuries," Justice Grant Powell said as he delivered her sentence. "I'm sure this is punishment on its own."
Court documents show the young mother was alone at home caring for her six-month-old infant and his two-year-old brother in May 2020.
She started to panic, placed him over her knee and slapped his back. He did not respond, and her panic increased.
She picked up the baby, holding him around the ribs, and ran through the house to her bedroom, his neck unsupported so his head repeatedly shook backward and forward.
"Her actions were born of terror," the woman's lawyer Emma Priest said in an earlier hearing, describing how the woman's two-year-old was distraught and crying at the same time, so she was running to another room in a bid to create some distance.
Crown prosecutor Matthew Nathan disagreed. Any reasonable parent even in a state of panic would not have carried the baby in the way that has caused the extent of the injuries he suffered, he said.
The woman called 111 at 6.27pm. Paramedics arrived shortly after and found the woman and her two children in the same bedroom, the baby "extremely pale and still" lying on the floor, the woman in a panicked state trying to console her two-year-old.
Justice Grant Powell said the court has grappled with this case. Photo / NZME
The baby was in respiratory arrest but gasped and started to breathe within a minute after paramedics started CPR.
He had to be resuscitated another two times on the way to hospital, where he was put on a ventilator at the paediatric intensive care unit.
The baby's injuries were serious - a brain bleed, bleeding behind the eyes, strained neck ligaments, and fractures to the ribs and clavicle - but he was now fully recovered.
The woman has no previous court history and pleaded guilty early on, "recognising she had fallen short of what was required of her by law" to keep her premature baby safe, said her lawyer.
This was an isolated incident arising from extreme distress, Priest said.
Following the incident, an Oranga Tamariki officer had glowing references for the woman after supervising her parenting for 720 hours, concluding the two children were safe under her care without supervision.
"This is a unique and unprecedented case," Priest said, arguing for a discharge without conviction and permanent name suppression for the woman, who already faced "unimaginable pressure" as a widowed mother of two young children.
A conviction poses real, appreciable risks to the woman's future job prospects, insurance, travel, application for rental properties - all of which would have consequences on the children.
"Is conviction necessary in this case? Does she deserve that black mark?" the defence lawyer asked.
The Crown conceded the woman did not wish harm and was at the lowest level of culpability, but there was a need to reflect denunciation and deterrence in the sentence, as well as the seriousness of the baby's injuries.
Nathan argued for a starting point of 18 months' jail, converted to a shorter community sentence of counselling and supervision after significant discounts given the defendant's guilty plea and personal circumstances.
Justice Powell dismissed it. "I just don't see how denunciation and deterrence is relevant in this case," he said.
"I entirely reject... that any starting point of jail could possibly be appropriate," the judge said, satisfied that a conviction would be "out of all proportion here".
"Your overall aim throughout was to resuscitate rather than to cause harm or injury," he said, turning to the woman who sat in the dock as she wiped away tears quietly under her face mask.
"There is no dispute you are a good mother who wants the best for her children."
He discharged her without conviction and granted permanent name suppression on grounds that publication would cause the woman and her children further stress.
"You and your children have gone through trauma," he told her. "Your interests outweigh those of the public including open justice.
