A baby who is in a critical condition in intensive care having sustained multiple brain bleeds and a fractured skull, allegedly inflicted by the father, \u201cis not likely to survive,\u201d a court heard on Friday. <\/p>\n
Appealing against a decision by a district judge to grant bail to the 33-year-old defendant, counsel told the High Court \u201cthis baby remains in a grave condition.\u201d<\/p>\n
The child is \u201cnot likely to survive,\u201d prosecutor Aoife Jennings told Lady Chief Justice Dame Siobhan Keegan, adding that if the child does survive, the injuries \u201cwill certainly be life-altering, if not life-limiting.\u201d<\/p>\n
The child\u2019s father, who cannot be identified in order to protect the identity of the baby, faces one charge of child cruelty and a further charge of causing or allowing \u201cserious physical harm\u201d to be caused to the complainant in January 2026.\u00a0<\/p>\n
During the appeal hearing, Ms Jennings told Northern Ireland\u2019s most senior judge the child\u2019s mother had been charged and had allegedly \u201crefused a number of other scans that would have assisted in the care of the baby.\u201d<\/p>\n
Earlier at Craigavon Magistrates Court, Deputy District Judge Peter Prenter granted bail to the man but he attached multiple, stringent conditions.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Public Prosecution Service (PPS) told the judge they intended to appeal his decision and a few hours later, that appeal was heard in front of the Lady Chief Justice.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Miss Jennings outlined how it was just after 4am when an ambulance crew contacted police about a concern for safety \u201cof a baby in cardiac arrest.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cPolice attended and on arrival, ambulance staff were performing CPR,\u201d she told the court.<\/p>\n
Having been successfully revived, the child was taken to the nearest hospital and on the way, the defendant told police he fed the baby at 12 and when he woke at 2am, he noticed the child was not breathing properly when he was preparing a bottle.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cHe lifted the baby and their head was floppy so he took the baby to the mother and she said to phone for an ambulance,\u201d the prosecutor told the court.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The court heard how hospital scans had uncovered multiple bleeds on the brain, in addition to a skull fracture.<\/p>\n
Later that morning, after the 33-year-old asked to speak to a detective, he told the officer: \u201cI shook him; he has been a nightmare lately, I shook him.\u201d<\/p>\n
Having been arrested, the defendant told police, \u201cI have f***** up this time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite the admission of shaking the baby, doctors said that action would not account for the skull fracture and that as doctors had found an older, healing brain bleed, there was a suspicion of repeated bouts of child abuse.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Miss Jennings revealed that the child\u2019s mother has also been arrested and although charged with similar offending, she was freed on police bail to appear in court at a later date.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Objecting to bail, the prosecutor told the Lady Chief Justice there were concerns about the risk of further offences and witness interference, as well as a flight risk.<\/p>\n
Defence counsel Damien Halleron said that the seriousness of an offence is not of itself a barrier to bail and that the police concerns had been addressed by the stringent bail conditions put in place by the lower court.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In ruling on the PPS appeal against bail, Dame Siobhan said it was clear that \u201cthe circumstances of this case are undoubtedly very serious and also very tragic and I think that everyone in the case would hope for the best for this baby.\u201d<\/p>\n
While she felt there was a risk of witness interference and further offending, it was also her view that the risks could be managed with the conditions which had been imposed.\u00a0<\/p>\n
They included that the defendantreside in an approved address, his father signs a \u00a32,000 surety and he has no contact with any witness.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In addition, Dame Siobhan ordered the defendant to report to police several times a week and that when he does, the police are allowed to check his phone to investigate if has been any contact between him and the child\u2019s mother.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The case is due back in court in March.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A baby who is in a critical condition in intensive care having sustained multiple brain bleeds and a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":288060,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[787,9,10,13,14,6,11,12,15,16,5,7,791,8,65,66,67],"class_list":{"0":"post-288059","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-bestof","9":"tag-breaking-news","10":"tag-breakingnews","11":"tag-featured-news","12":"tag-featurednews","13":"tag-headlines","14":"tag-latest-news","15":"tag-latestnews","16":"tag-main-news","17":"tag-mainnews","18":"tag-news","19":"tag-top-stories","20":"tag-topix","21":"tag-topstories","22":"tag-world","23":"tag-world-news","24":"tag-worldnews"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288059","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=288059"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288059\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/288060"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=288059"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=288059"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=288059"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}