Baby with fractured skull and paraplegia: Dad's not guilty

The 29-year-old Cessnock man has been found not guilty of inflicting any harm on his daughter.

While he may have been the last person to attend to the infant, it was possible her injuries were inflicted before then, Judge Pauline David found.

It was possible that when he picked her up he disturbed her spine, inadvertently exacerbating those injuries, resulting in the symptoms that brought her into hospital in her screaming mother's arms.

When she arrived at Cessnock Hospital, the baby girl was profoundly unconscious.

She had a fractured skull, bleeding on the brain, and a complete spinal injury.

She had new and old rib fractures, and signs of having suffered an earlier head injury.

Handing down her judgement today, Judge David said that based upon the evidence, she found the accused, identified only as GP, had a caring and controlled attitude towards his partner and his two daughters.

There was nothing to suggest that he ever possessed the sort of mental state which would have caused him to inflict those injuries on the baby.

Contrary to the prosecution case against him, she found that the medical evidence did not prove that the baby's head and spinal injuries had to have occurred at the same time, or as a result of shaking as opposed to another mechanism, or that it would have caused immediate unconsciousness.

Judge David said the overwhelming weight of the evidence was that the care the father provided his baby girl was benign and appropriate. The baby's mother, on the other hand, had demonstrated a capacity for anger, frustration and erratic behaviour.

He said it was clear from the evidence that she was regularly unable to cope with, or employ more benign ways of caring for her children.

The mother suffered from a number of serious mental health issues and her language, behaviour and attitude were frequently highly emotional, abusive, angry and erratic.

The accused had demonstrated a capacity for a "remarkable level of "forbearance and temperance", when dealing with the demands of his partner as a consequence of her mental health, Judge David said.

"He was consistently supportive in his references to her and calm about the children," she said

There was no evidence that the accused had deliberately misled the court, medicos, or investigating police,

On the other hand, the mother had lied about issues of significance throughout the trial, Judge David said, trying to portray a false image of herself.

She told police she was not using any illicit drugs while in fact she was spending $150 per week on cannabis and arranged for her sister to remove all evidence of that once at hospital with the baby.

She had also lied to doctors, police, and in court, denying that she had ever become frustrated with the baby and denying that she had ever hit her.

Text messages read out in court had revealed that both those things were true.

It was only when she was presented with incontrovertible evidence to the contrary that she made certain admissions, Judge David.

"She did seek to falsely portray herself to this court and she has done so with the police and she has done-so deliberately and to avoid and deflect ... and quite convincingly," Judge David said.

EARLIER REPORTS:

At the start of the judge-alone trial on February 14, defence barrister Paul Rosser, KC, said there were only two people alone with the baby at any relevant time - mum and dad.

The trial would come down to the mother's truthfulness and reliability, particularly when she asserts she went to bed at 10pm that night, and did not get up until the baby's father ran in to her with the limp baby in his arms.

Judge David said she could have no confidence that the mother would tell the truth about that, unless she was presented with incontrovertible evidence to the contrary.

The father was arrested on February 17, 2021, and initially charged with attempted murder.

He wept with relief as the verdict was handed down today, telling Mr Rosser he hoped he'd never see him again.

Police were heavily criticised throughout the trial for interview tactics which Judge David described as appalling.

At one point police had lied to the man, no doubt to elicit evidence, Judge David said.

Instead, the "improper behaviour" of police in the interview achieved the opposite of their intention, because the accused behaved in a tempered way and took avoidance action, asking assertively and with self-control to deal with just one of the two detectives in the room.