A 25-year-old Western Cape father was on Monday found guilty of murdering his three-month-old bay.
Eugene Plaatjies was also convicted of child abuse and assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm in the Western Cape High Court.
His daughter, three-month-old Anthonique, died at Red Cross Children’s hospital, a day after she was admitted on June 13, 2014.
Acting Judge Nolita Kose on Monday said she found it “very difficult to accept the version of the accused” and had no doubt that he “inflicted and consequently caused the death of the deceased”.
During the trial, the forensic pathologist who performed the autopsy, testified that the infant had sustained multiple bruises, multiple fractures, severe closed head injuries, mulitple skull fractures, a laceration of the liver, fractures of the ribs and a contusion of the lung. The baby had both fresh and old fractures and had been “chronically abused”.
The pathologist said the extensive fractures of the skull would have been caused by banging the baby’s head against the wall or kicking her in the head.
The Judge dismissed Plaatjie’s version that the baby had fallen off the bed and hit a bench.
The mother of the baby, 30-year-old Louise Alkaster, pleaded guilty to child neglect and was sentenced to a five year suspended sentence at the start of the trial.
During the trial, she testified about the abuse she suffered at the hands of Plaatjies.
She testified about several incidents when her baby was injured while in the care of her father and told the court she always accepted the explanation of the accused.
Less than three weeks before the infant’s death on May 26, Anthonique was admitted to the hospital in Montagu, where they lived, with a broken arm.
A file was opened and marked code red as it was an emergency. The trauma doctor who attended to her testified in the trial that a broken arm was an extremely rare injury on an infant, and that “a certain amount of force must have been used”.
Alkaster told the court that the day before her baby died she had been doing household chores when Plaatjies called her inside and she found the child having seizures.
The baby was again admitted to the hospital. She was unconscious, had shallow breathing, and bruises all over her body.
Staff at the Montagu hospital transferred Anthonique to the Red Cross Children’s Hospital where she was declared brain dead and died the following day.
Two days later, Plaatjies threatened Alkaster with a knife and beat her up. A neighbour came to her rescue and the police were called.
Alkaster told the court she never laid a charge against her partner out of both fear and love.
Judge Kose found Plaatjies guilty of assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm for this incident.
She said all the injuries sustained by the baby had happened while she was in the care of her parents. Kose accepted the evidence of their neighbour Berenice Petersen who had testified that she had noticed that the baby had an injury on her lips.
Kose said this had happened when Plaatjies “forced a bottle into her mouth”.
Plaatjies mother had also testified as a state witness during the trial and had told the court that the baby had been handed to her to babysit with socks over her hands. When she took the socks off she saw that Anthonique’s hands were blue and bruised, as were her feet.
Plaatjie’s explanation was that he had used a cane to beat Alkaster’s 15-year-old son and he had accidentally hit the baby during the beating.
But, the Judge described his version as “highly improbable”.
His explanation for the baby’s broken arm had been that the neighbour had roughly massaged her after a bath, but the Judge dismissed this too and said: “In my view the accused is the one who broke her arm, he abused and deliberately neglected the deceased.”
Plaatjies remained expressionless throughout the lengthy judgement.
While waiting for the judge to arrive earlier, however, he animatedly chatted to two women in the public gallery and posed for photographs for the media, seemingly enjoying the attention.
Sentencing proceedings were set down to start on June 1.
-African News Agency (ANA)
