Man kicked, punched and threw baby ‘like a toy’

A teenage mother watched helplessly as her partner slapped, kicked, punched and threw her baby around an apartment as if the 10-month-old was a toy.

“It was the most incredibly difficult thing to go through,” the 19-year-old mother told Ennis Circuit Court yesterday. “I knew he was hurting the child and I couldn’t do anything about it.”

Over a three-week period the baby’s injuries included:

* Two broken forearms;

* Dislocated right elbow;

* Significant brain bleed;

* Bite to the right cheek;

* A burn mark from an iron to the leg;

* Multiple bruising.

The accused, Larry Connors, lived with the young mother but was not the baby’s father.

His counsel, Brian McInerney, told the court Connors “was ill-prepared, ill-trained and ill-conditioned for the stresses and strains of looking after a small baby”.

Connors, aged 20, from Cronan Lawn, Shannon, Co Clare, was jailed for three years after he pleaded guilty to cruelty of the baby on dates between Dec 15, 2010, and Jan 3 last year.

Judge Carroll Moran ruled the name of the mother and baby should not be divulged publicly.

The mother said her baby was now “doing fine”. However, she said the boy would require speech therapy because of a tear injury to his mouth while surgery would be needed to have his dislocated elbow broken later this year in order to have it reset.

Judge Moran described the case as “fairly shocking”.

The defenceless baby, the judge observed, suffered the dreadful injuries over a three-week period.

The mother told the court: “My child wakes up in the middle of the night screaming and shouting.

“I believe that this is the result of flashbacks of the abuse that he suffered at the hands of Larry Connors.”

She added: “I want justice for my child so that I can move on with my life.”

The court heard Connors, who became psychotic, would lock himself into a room with the child and start to “scream and roar at the child”.

Consultant paediatrician at Mid-West Regional Hospital in Limerick, Dr Siobhán Gallagher, who treated the baby, had noted: “These injuries are severe and significant and have caused extreme pain at the time that they occurred.”