A couple have been jailed after their eight-week-old baby died with more than 60 broken bones in her body.
During police interviews, Naomi Johnson, 24, and Benjamin O’Shea, 26, claimed paramedics caused the fractures suffered by their daughter Amina-Faye - but were found guilty by a jury of causing or allowing her to suffer serious physical harm.
Amina-Faye had 41 fractures to her ribs and 24 fractures to her limbs when she died in April 2019.
The case came to light after they called 999 in April 2019 to say the little girl had stopped breathing.
Paramedics tried to save her but she died at the scene and her death was originally thought to be Sudden Unexplained Death in Infants, but post mortem X-rays showed a catalogue of injuries.
She was found to have over 60 fractured bones in her body, including 41 identified fractures to her ribs and 24 limb bone fractures.
Experts said the multiple fractures pointed towards her suffering continued physical abuse over her short life with some relatively recent and others already beginning to heal suggesting they had been inflicted earlier in her eight-week life.
Judge Nigel Peters QC, sentencing at Inner London Crown Court, said this was “yet another harrowing case of parents abusing or being cruel to their child”, adding that “there is no doubt that this is a case of the highest seriousness in terms of cruelty to children in terms of the injuries”.
Medics could not establish a cause of death of “this poor child” and it is not possible to lay blame on which parent caused the fatal injuries and who stood back and allowed it to happen, the court heard.
O’Shea, 26, from Southwark, was sentenced to eight-and-a-half-years for causing or allowing Amina-Faye to suffer serious physical harm while Johnson, 24, of Battersea, south west London, was jailed for seven years for this offence.
Both of them were also each given two months, to be served consecutively, after being found guilty of cruelty to a person under-16 in relation to a separate child.
Amina-Faye’s case was described as “truly heartbreaking” by Detective Inspector Melanie Pressley, who led the investigation.
After sentencing, she said: “The cruelty and callousness with which the pair discussed the treatment of the other child in this case is shocking.
“Children depend on adults and the children in this case were sorely betrayed by Johnson and O’Shea in the most tragic of ways.
“In eight weeks of life, Amina suffered an unimaginable number of injuries.
“The trauma she endured in her short life is impossible to comprehend. Her injuries are a catalogue of the most despicable abuse.
“Equally incomprehensible is how an adult can inflict such cruelty on defenceless, innocent children.”
She said Johnson and O’Shea had been “steadfast in their refusal” to answer police questions about the baby’s death and had “sought to protect themselves in a way they clearly did not” for their victims.
