A five-month-old girl was found to have injuries including bruising to her face and body, a broken collarbone and bleeding on her brain when she was brought to hospital by her parents, Cork Circuit Criminal Court has heard.
Prosecution counsel Jane Hyland SC listed the girl’s injuries as she gave an outline of the evidence the jury will hear in the case of a man (31) charged with three offences in relation to his care for his daughter.
The accused, who cannot be named to protect the girl’s identity, is charged with causing serious harm to the child on January 4th, 2021, and with assault causing harm to the child between November 25th and December 15th, 2020.
He is also charged with wilfully assaulting or ill-treating the child in a manner likely to cause unnecessary suffering to her health or to seriously affect her wellbeing.
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He denies the charges, which the State alleges occurred while the infant was in his care at their family home over a six-week period between November 25th, 2020 and January 4th, 2021.
Opening the prosecution case, Ms Hyland told the jury they would hear evidence from a creche worker of how she noticed a bruise to the child’s cheek on December 15th, 2020. The child’s grandmother also had concerns about the girl in late November and early December 2020.
The girl’s grandmother visited the family home on January 4th, 2021 and noticed the child was very distressed and fatigued. The parents brought the girl to the local South Doc GP service and she was sent to Cork University Hospital (CUH), where the infant was seen by a consultant paediatrician.
Ms Hyland told the jury the child’s father was interviewed by a social worker at CUH and told them he had dropped his daughter accidentally at home. However, in a subsequent interview with the social work team at CUH, he told them he had shaken the child.
Consultant ophthalmologist Dr Sarah Moran told the court she found extensive haemorrhage at the front of the girl’s retina, within the retina and underneath the retina in both eyes.
She said such extensive haemorrhage was “highly suggestive” of shaken baby syndrome or abusive head trauma and that she did not believe it could have occurred in an accidental fall as such a level of retinal bleeding was usually only seen after high velocity impacts such as car crashes.
She said she had serious concerns that there could be long-lasting visual damage because of this level of retinal bleeding. While further tests in February and March 2021 and then in 2023 showed no damage, she said there remained a lifelong risk of retinal detachment.
Cross-examined by defence counsel Ray Boland SC, Dr Moran agreed that her concerns have “not been borne out yet” but she said she believed the retinal injuries amounted to serious harm as they were so severe that they had the propensity to cause permanent sight damage.
Dr Moran said that it was impossible to measure the extent of the damage of such retinal bleeds in a five-month-old baby, but she was sure that such a level of bleeding would impact the child’s sight as she could not see through that level of bleeding in the centre of her eyes.
“There is no way that the vision from the centre of the eye was not affected by the level of macular retinal haemorrhage ... there is no doubt but with that level of bleeding in the centre of the eye that the function of the eye was affected.”
The case continues.
