Warwickshire man may be able to care for daughter again

A warehouseman found to have shaken his baby daughter and caused a brain injury could be allowed to care for the youngster again if therapy is successful, a senior family court judge said.

The girl, the daughter of a Lithuanian couple living in Warwickshire, suffered a ‘catastrophic collapse’ when four months old and stopped breathing for around six minutes.

Council social services bosses with responsibility for her welfare placed her in the sole care of her mother and asked Mrs Justice Roberts to decide what had happened.

Mrs Justice Roberts concluded that her father had probably shaken her during a ‘momentary loss of control’, after analysing the case at a private hearing in the Family Division of the High Court in London.

The court heard the couple were in an on-off relationship when the mother became pregnant and the man had affairs with other another woman during her pregnancy. 

But the judge said, in a written ruling, that the man is now back in a relationship with the girl’s mother and was continuing to see the girl.

She said social services staff were doing ‘therapeutic work’ with the couple in the hope that the girl, now two, could at some stage live with her parents once more.

The judge said the youngster appeared to have made a ‘complete recovery’ and the prognosis for her future was good. 

Mrs Justice Roberts said neither the couple, who are in their 20s and from Lithuania, could not be identified after she was asked to rule on what happened by Warwickshire County Council.

The High Court heard the girl could now live with the father with the help of social services

A year ago a less senior family court judge had exonerated the man.

But social services bosses appealed and Mrs Justice Roberts has come to a different conclusion after re-analysing the case.

The couple had suggested that their daughter might have Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, a condition which affects tissue supporting tendons, ligaments and blood vessels, but a specialist had ruled out the idea.