A MAN has gone on trial at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court for cruelty and assault of a two-year-old child in Kildare.
He is alleged to have dragged the child by her hair into a cold bath and to have put shampoo in her mouth after she got sick.
The court also heard he kept the child’s mother back by brandishing a kitchen knife and threatening to kill her.
The 25-year-old with an address in Dublin has pleaded not guilty to assault causing harm and cruelty to his then partner’s child at her home in Kildare on March 5th, 2008.
He has also denied a charge of producing a knife during the alleged incident.
The child’s mother told Monika Leech, prosecuting, that when the accused man returned home from work, the child got sick on the bed. She said her daughter used to get sick when she saw her partner because she was in fear of him.
She said as she started cleaning it up, he took the child by the ponytail and pulled her into the bathroom. She said he ran a cold bath and put the child in. The little girl was trying to get out but the accused had her by the neck and was forcing her down into the tub.
She said he sprayed shampoo in the child’s mouth and then washed it down with the shower nozzle. The woman said she tried to get to her daughter but he had a knife and threatened to kill her.
She said he headbutted her and said: “That child walks all over you because you don’t chastise her.”
She said he took the child out of the bath and put her to bed without drying her. He then left the house until later that night.
She said when he returned later, he took the child out of bed and said he was sorry and that he loved her.
She said she called gardaí two days later and they told her to take the child to hospital.
The woman agreed with John Byrne, defending, that there were several differences between her various accounts of the incident but she said this was due to her distressed state of mind when she was talking to gardaí.
She said she lived in fear of the accused and that he had stabbed her with a screwdriver on one occasion. She agreed that they had got back together after she went to gardaí.
She further agreed that a picture showed the couple on holiday together with their arms around each other. However, she pointed out that the same picture showed her “with the eye hanging out of me head” from an alleged beating from him.
The trial continues before Judge Patricia Ryan and a jury of seven men and five women.