True Crime
London Couple Jailed for Combined 15 Years for Abuse of 8 Week Old Baby
Amina-Faye Johnson had more than sixty broken bones
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26-year-old Benjamin O’Shea and 23-year-old Naomi Johnson have been found guilty of causing or allowing their daughter, Amina-Faye Johnson to suffer physical harm and cruelty to a child in a London court. The charges stem from their chronic abuse of their infant daughter and another child.
The couple was forced to call paramedics after baby Amina stopped breathing on April 26, 2019. Paramedics arrived within minutes, but despite their best efforts to revive her, she died at the scene. Initially, the cause of her death was believed to be sudden unexplained infant death (SUID), but an autopsy revealed the true horror of Amina’s short existence.
A post-mortem examination found that Amina had more than 60 separate broken bones. The bulk of the injuries — 41 of them — were to her ribs. Another 24 of the fractures were to her limbs. X-rays showed that some of her broken bones were recent, but others had begun to heal, indicating that her abuse had been sustained over time rather than in any single incident.
A medical expert concluded that the fractures were inflicted on at least seven separate occasions. The rib fractures alone resulted from at least two incidents. It was also noted that the varying locations of the injuries ruled out any possibility that they had been accidental. Additionally, there was evidence of previous bleeding into the head that had healed.
O’Shea told paramedics that they had taken Amina to the family physician the day before for a checkup and suggested that an inoculation the doctor had given her may have been responsible for her death. He said that she had woken up at 7:30 the following morning and been given some paracetamol to help her get back to sleep. He said he put her back into bed but found her not breathing 20 minutes later. That’s when he called 999.
This differed from what he told the doctors at the hospital. He also told them that they had given Amina paracetamol but said it was before she went to sleep and that she had awakened at 1:00 a.m. He claimed that it was then that Johnson gave her more paracetamol, fed her…
