Doctors feared baby girl suffered brain injury, child cruelty trial hears

The six-month-old baby girl at the centre of a child cruelty trial at Cork Circuit Criminal Court was examined by a doctor who testified yesterday that there were initial concerns that the child might have suffered a brain injury because of bleeding found in a scan.

The infant’s 31-year-old father denies counts of cruelty to the baby, assault causing harm, and causing her serious harm.

The 31-year-old from Co Cork pleaded not guilty to the three separate charges when arraigned at Cork Circuit Criminal Court.

He denied assault causing harm, assault causing serious harm, and cruelty to the child — on various dates from November 25, 2020, to January 2021, when his daughter was around six months old.

Consultant paediatrician Rosina McGovern said that doctors at Cork University Hospital (CUH) were extremely concerned by what was shown by the CT scan when the infant was first admitted.

This subdural haemorrhage was evidence of tearing of tissues connecting the right and left sides of her brain caused by a back-and-forth acceleration and deceleration and is associated with abusive head trauma, Dr McGovern testified.

The child’s parents brought her to CUH at 9pm on January 4, following a visit to South Doc after the child had been vomiting for eight hours.

The child had no history of trauma or falls but presented with a number of bruises on her face, cheek, stomach, abdomen, and right buttock, as well as abrasions on her left temporal area, her cheek, her nose, and her parents offered no explanation for these marks.

Dr McGovern said: 

“She was lethargic, and she couldn’t smile or wasn’t vocalising which you would expect in a five-month-old, and there was concern that she might have suffered some brain dysfunction.”

She said an x-ray revealed the child had suffered a broken collar bone which was very unusual in a five-month-old.

She said she believed the child’s injuries constituted serious harm as defined in Irish law as “an injury that creates a substantial risk of death or causes serious disfigurement or substantial loss or impairment of mobility of the body or function of a bodily member or organ”.

Cross-examined by defence counsel Ray Boland SC, Dr McGovern agreed the child’s condition improved after treatment and was no longer lethargic after January 8, 2021, and was behaving as a five-month-old would be expected to when discharged from CUH on January 18.

Judge Dermot Sheehan asked the seven women and five men of the jury to return to Cork Circuit Criminal Court today for the case, which is expected to last at least until May 16.