The mother of the boy from Chavez, who was hospitalized with very serious injuries compatible with shaken baby syndrome, and his partner refused to testify this Thursday at the beginning of the trial in the Vila Real court.
The two accused – she is 20 years old and he is 30 years old, live in Chaves – appear before a group of judges of the Vila Real court and are accused by the Ministry of State (MP) of committing as a co-author, a crime that violates serious physical integrity, classified, by obvious competition, as crime of aggravated domestic violence.
This Thursday, at the first court hearing, they decided not to appear before the panel of judges.
The facts, according to the deputy, relate to the conduct of the defendants towards a child born in April 2022, who is now 18 months old.
As for the defendant, the case to challenge the paternity of the child is taking place in the Chaves court, where a verdict has not yet been rendered.
In the summer of 2022, when he was four months old, the boy was admitted to the São João hospitals in Porto and Chaves with a poor prognosis after he was diagnosed with very serious injuries compatible with shaken baby syndrome. . .
Suspicions of parental abuse led to an investigation by the Vila Real Judicial Police.
According to the indictment brought by prosecutors, between at least July 21 and August 4, 2022, “the defendants repeatedly and vigorously shook the body of their infant son, impressing him with sudden, violent and consistent movements.”
The deputy considered that the defendants “acted individually or jointly, but always with the tacit consent of both and in concert, repeatedly, on unknown dates and dates, but not less than twice.”
With this behavior, according to the deputy, “the defendants caused the child’s retinal hemorrhages and subdural hemorrhages, small foci of subarachnoid hemorrhages and multiple convulsive crises.”
Which, he added, represented “a situation of real danger for the victim” and led to his hospitalization in the pediatric intensive care unit due to “mild to moderate diffuse encephalopathy, subarachnoid hemorrhages, subdural hematoma and hemorrhages in the fundus.”
Following discharge in September 2022, the child was admitted to hospital and returned to hospital between October and December of that year.
According to the indictment, the victim presents “a clinical picture of epireliform disease with a present and foreseeable future requirement for chronic pharmacological therapy with antiepileptic drugs, which may represent a permanent and irreversible disease.”
A coercive measure was applied to the defendants, prohibiting them from contacting or approaching the child.
The prosecutor’s office also demanded that compensation be awarded in favor of the victim.
In 2016, a Vila Real court sentenced the defendant’s mother to a maximum sentence of 25 years in prison for incitement to murder and the man to 20 years for the murder of a young man, whose body they burned and buried in a backyard in Chavez.
The defendant’s youngest daughter was present during the desecration and concealment of the corpse, and this situation left the judge in “shock.”
Author: Lusa
Source: CM Jornal
I’m Sandra Hansen, a news website Author and Reporter for 24 News Reporters. I have over 7 years of experience in the journalism field, with an extensive background in politics and political science. My passion is to tell stories that are important to people around the globe and to engage readers with compelling content.