Corporal punishment warning after death

A JURY in an inquest into the death of a three-year-old girl has recommended that corporal punishment not be used by people in charge of “fragile” children.

The rider was brought in by the six woman and two-man jury at the end of an inquest yesterday into the death of Sefora Kycwak in Tralee in 2005.

There were a number of witness statements at the coroner’s court in Tralee of how the child had dozens of injuries and scratches on her body, some of which were old, at the time of her death from brain injury.

The child’s mother, Monika Paczkowska, 34, last year pleaded guilty to the willful ill-treatment of her daughter in a manner likely to cause injury or suffering, at Killeen Woods, Tralee, on August 2 and 3, 2005, and had been given a four-year sentence in May 2010.

Coroner Helen Lucey said it was not for an inquest to exonerate or to blame, but the jury were “entitled to know the surrounding circumstances”

Paczkowska was brought to yesterday’s inquest. Dressed in jeans and a jacket and clutching a book she replied “Yes” to Inspector Martin McCarthy when he asked her to confirm she was the mother of the child.

She was in tears when she took the stand briefly.

A neighbour at Killeen Woods, Breda Carey, told how on the night in question, two of Paczkowska’s children arrived at her house shortly before 1am to say “come quickly, come quickly, my sister sick.”

Ms Carey found Packzkowska attempting resuscitation, blowing in the child’s mouth and pushing and pressing on the child’s stomach. “I felt it was too forceful.,” she said.

Ms Packowska told her the child had become ill after drinking a soft drink, and she was aggressive in the way she described it.

After she told the mother to stop she did so.

A doctor at Kerry General hospital, where the child was brought by ambulance, alerted gardaí after noticing old and new bruising and scratches on the little girl’s limbs and buttocks, lower back and chest, the inquest heard.

Insp Fearghal Patwell of Tralee gardaí noticed bruising on the child’s body when he called to the hospital. The child died on August 5, 2005.

Assistant state pathologist Dr Margot Bolster, who carried out the postmortem, said the multiple bruises to head and body were not consistent with child’s play or a simple fall or resuscitation attempts.

The pathologist detailed injuries to the child’s armpits, chest and limbs and there was a 4.5 cm bruise to one of her buttocks. Brain swelling was the immediate cause of death due to blunt force trauma as a result of multiple blows and slaps to the head, as well as rotational injury, she said.

The jury returned a verdict in accordance with Dr Bolster’s evidence and submitted a written request: “People who have the care of children should refrain from corporal punishment, bearing in mind their fragility.”