The heartbroken mother of murdered toddler Santina O’Donoghue Cawley says she is haunted by the image of her baby daughter suffering a brutal beating.
On Monday, Karen Harrington, 38, was jailed for life for the murder of two-year-old Santina at her Cork apartment on July 5, 2019.
But said the trial gave her no answers and the trauma of imagining what happened her “little angel” that night will never leave her.
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Santina was found unresponsive with multiple injuries at the flat two hours after her father Michael Cawley left her there alone with Harrington.
The pair had been socialising with friends but Harrington left in a distressed state at 1.30am after a row in which he called her a “prostitute”.
Bridget, known as Bridgee, said she is tormented and her “heart is in pieces” that Santina was not home with her and her siblings that night.
She told the Irish Sunday Mirror: “She wasn’t born to die like that, I only had my baby for two years.
“I still don’t know what happened my baby, how did she end up with broken ribs?”
During the murder trial, the court heard how Michael Cawley and Karen Harrington were drinking and smoking cannabis at a friend’s home that night.
The friend offered to mind Santina overnight after she fell asleep on the couch, but the offer was refused.
Karen Harrington was alone with Santina at her apartment at 26 Elderwood Park, on Cork’s Boreenmanna Road, in the early hours of July 5.
She admitted the child was uninjured when her father left the apartment just after 3am to walk into the city to look for his cousin.
But by the time he returned just after 5am, Santina was critically injured and close to death.
What happened in those two critical hours did not come to light at the trial as Harrington gave evidence saying she could not say what happened to the child.
Bridgee said she would relish the opportunity to sit across the table with her child’s killer and ask her the burning question ‘why’.
She said: “I waited for three years to find out what happened to my child. The trial brought it all back, all over again.
“I’d like to go in and ask her ‘why, why my child?’ That’s what I’d like to do, because I got no answers in court.
“I’m not happy that I still have no answers. There’s no explanation for why she did it.
“Her anger with Michael had nothing to do with my two year old.”
Harrington, who pleaded not guilty to murder, has been on protective watch in Limerick Prison since being convicted and sentenced to life in prison on Monday.
Bridgee said: “I’d say she will own up to it eventually, she will break...
“There are a lot of women in there who have kids, they are not going to have any time for a woman who killed a child.”
Santina sustained what the court heard were “unrecoverable” injuries in a brutal assault, with cuts and bruises to every part of her body.
Her post-mortem recorded 49 external injuries and several internal haemorrages, including a complex skull fracture, a traumatic brain injury and a severe spinal chord injury.
Her father Michael recounted how he found her at 5.11am at Harrington’s flat lying naked and blood-spattered on a filthy duvet with clumps of her hair torn out.
Santina was so tiny that Sgt Brian Teahan told the court how he could only use two fingers rather than his entire hand to perform CPR on her.
Bridgee said: “When the garda called to the door I thought it was Michael coming in with my baby.
“It wasn’t, it was the worst nightmare of my life. I held her in my arms and she was gone...”
Bridgee revealed that Santina’s older sister Candice, 15, has set up a shrine to her baby sister at home and lights a candle for her every day.
And she said the tot’s three older brothers, Michael, 13, Patrick, 11, and eight-year-old Thomas, were all broken-hearted at her loss.
Revealing how Santina was a rainbow baby, she said: “I had a miscarriage between Thomas and Santina. If you met her you’d love her.
“She was a very happy child, very funny, she knew what she wanted.
“I’m constantly up at the grave. It was the hardest thing, getting a baby casket to get her buried in.
“I’m seeing robins and other signs of her. I feel her presence. The other kids are the same, they miss her so much.
“I still have some of her stuff at home. I can’t go into the shops where I used to buy her clothes, little things like that would get me.
“We hold on to the happy memories, but all the plans I had for her... it breaks my heart.
“The kids had good times with her, she (Harrington) took all that love from my kids and me.
“They can’t understand how a grown woman could do that to a baby.
“I’ll let no-one touch my kids ever again. I can’t trust again.”
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