Landmark appeal case of 'coercive control' involving mother 'Jenny' sentenced to six years in prison for seriously harming her newborn baby.
It is four years to the month since Jenny was sentenced to six years in prison for seriously harming her newborn baby – leaving him with cracked ribs, skull fractures and bleeding on the brain that almost cost him his life. She told the court that she had caught her cardigan on a cupboard while preparing her son’s feed, dropping him on to a concrete floor. But the explanation could not account for the severity of his horrific injuries – and did not wash with the jury. Collapsing in the dock as their guilty verdict was read out, Jenny could only plead “I didn’t do it”, before she was led away. Today, the mother of three will tell the Court of Appeal that it was in fact her violent ex-partner – the baby’s father – who caused the infant’s injuries after punching her while she was holding the child. It was, ironically, only in prison that Jenny felt safe enough to disclose that she had been unable to tell the truth in court, where she had to sit in the dock alongside her abusive ex – her co- defendant in the case who was acquitted on a lesser charge. “It was a matter of survival,” she says now. “I was there under his watchful eye. He controlled my every move and thought.” In a letter to her previous legal team, four months after she was convicted, she described his campaign of terror, which saw her subject to frequent beatings and rape, locked up, deprived of food and sleep and urinated on – an experience amounting to “torture”.
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Location: High Court, Royal Courts of Justice, London, England, UK
Photo credit: © Jeff Gilbert / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: abusive, case, coercive, control, court, courts, domestic, high, jenny, justice, london, partner, relationship, royal, trial, violence
