Father fined for not helping injured son
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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 03/03/2015 (3312 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
BRANDON – A Westman father has been fined $2,000 and put on probation for two years for failing to seek medical help for his son who had a fractured skull.
The injuries would have made it obvious that the boy needed medical attention right away, Judge Donovan Dvorak said during sentencing.
“Any right-thinking parent would have sought immediate medical diagnosis and treatment,” Dvorak said.
“It is a parent’s responsibility to ensure that a child who may be in need of medical treatment receive that treatment as promptly as the circumstances require.”
The 27-year-old father was sentenced on Tuesday in Brandon provincial court for failing to provide necessities to a child.
The boy’s mother was previously sentenced to house arrest for the same charge, plus assault causing bodily harm for other injuries to the child.
Neither offending parent, nor their small Westman community, can be named due to a publication ban that protects the identity of the victim.
The following details of what happened were presented by Crown and defence counsel during the parents’ separate sentencings.
The boy was two months old in May 2011, when his head was injured.
The court accepted the father’s explanation that the infant rolled off the bed while he was changing his diaper.
Despite severe swelling and bruising to the boy’s head — and his constant crying, presumably out of pain — his parents decided not to take him to hospital.
Four days later, they took their son to a previously scheduled immunization appointment, where a nurse noticed green bruises to the entire side of the child’s head.
That nurse arranged to have the child seen by a doctor the next day. That doctor — who happened to be the family physician — found a small bruise, but nothing of concern.
Child and Family Services then apprehended the child, who was taken to another doctor who discovered he had a fractured skull.
Later, at the father’s preliminary hearing, a doctor would testify that a four-day delay in seeking medical care for the head injury could have brought complications, and even death.
However, Crown attorney Rich Lonstrup said there were no lasting problems from the injury.
“Maybe I was stupid for not taking him to hospital right away,” the father had told police.
Lonstrup said the father had also feared that CFS would get involved if the boy’s injury was discovered.
Besides the fractured skull, the boy had fractured ribs in various stages of healing, suggesting they’d been inflicted on different occasions.
In May 2013, the boy’s mother was sentenced on the same charge as the father in relation to failing to get help for the head injury.
She was also sentenced for assault causing bodily harm for fracturing her son’s ribs during “rough handling” or by “forceful grabbing.”
She said other people, who weren’t named in court, may have handled the boy roughly, but she admitted to causing some of the injuries.
Court heard that the mom had just turned 18 at the time of her son’s birth and admitted to having problems with anger.
She was bullied as a child and struggled with depression, and Lonstrup suggested she may have been overwhelmed with the demands of parenthood, especially with a colicky child.
She was sentenced to nine months house arrest and two years of probation.
The couple has since split up, and CFS permanently apprehended the child, who was expected to be placed for adoption.
ihitchen@brandonsun.com
Twitter: @IanHitchen