Three year old Dwelaniyah died after suffering horrific injuries (Picture: PA/North News)
A mum is on trial accused of murdering her three-year-old son after hitting him with a cane and deliberately burning him in scalding water.
Christina Robinson, 30, has said the Bible told her to chastise her son Dwelaniyah to attacks which caused ‘terrible’ injuries, including severe and excruciating burns to his legs, buttocks and genitals.
After the attacks, she allegedly did not seek medical help for her toddler, and prosecutors have claimed she later shook him, causing his head to bang into a surface, killing him.
Robinson, of Bracken Court, Ushaw Moor, County Durham, denies murder and child cruelty and is standing trial at Newcastle Crown Court.
Richard Wright KC, prosecuting, said Robinson called the emergency services at 4:09pm on November 5, 2022, asking for an ambulance to be sent to her home, saying Dwelaniyah had stopped breathing.
Dweleniyah, who wearing only a nappy, with his legs heavily bandaged, was not breathing and his heart had stopped.
The three year old was forced to sit in scalding water (Picture: North News)
Despite attempts to restart it at the scene, he could not be saved as his heart had been stopped for too long.
Robinson claimed he had collapsed while eating a cheese bun, adding that he didn’t swallow food well in general.
Regarding his bandaged legs, she claimed he had burned himself while ‘messing about in the shower’.
Mr Wright said police and medical professionals were ‘gravely concerned’ about the death of the Dwelaniyah and questioned the credibility and honesty of Robinson’s account.
He added: ‘Following his death, Dwelaniyah’s body was examined by a number of medical experts. Their findings revealed that the police and doctors who had tried to save him had been rightly sceptical of the account that this defendant had given.
‘His body revealed that over a period of time before his death he had been the victim of a series of assaults and had sustained a number of non-accidental injuries. In other words, somebody had been deliberately hurting this little boy and had been doing so over a period of time. That person was his mother, the defendant Christina Robinson.’
A crime scene was set up at the home (Picture: North News)
The prosecutor cited multiple areas of tramline bruising, a distinctive type of bruise which forms when someone has been hit with a cylindrical weapon – in Dwelaniyah’s case, it was a bamboo cane.
Mr Wright continued: ‘A cane stained with his blood and with his body tissue attached to it was recovered from the family home. The defendant admits that she hit him with a weapon but says that she was allowed to do so because the Bible tells her that she should chastise her child.
‘The burns were severe and covered between 15 and 20% of the surface area of his body. They would have caused him excruciating pain both when inflicted and afterwards when not properly treated or cared for.
‘It was patently obvious to Christina Robinson but for weeks after these burns were sustained, she sought no help for her son and instead watched as every day he struggled in pain with terrible burns bleeding through the bandages that she applied.’
Mr Wright said it was clear that someone did ‘this to him deliberately’, and the tot did not choke to death by accident as there was no food in his airway.
He said: ‘There was damage seen in both his brain and in his eyes. In combination these findings suggest a significant head injury in which trauma had been caused by excessive and forceful movement of the head of the type you might see in very forceful shaking.
Dwelaniyah was beaten with a bamboo rod (Picture: PA)
‘There was evidence of an older and healing injury to his brain that preceded the fatal head injury by two days. That early head injury was caused by a similar mechanism, the deliberate application of significant force.’
The court heard Robinson was in contact with medical professionals for herself after having fallen pregnant again after seeking a sperm donor and starting a casual relationship while her husband was working away in the RAF.
On October 28, Mr Wright said Robinson sent messages ranting about ‘these damn kids’ and the terrible night of sleep that they have given her.
He added: ‘Notwithstanding the pain and suffering that Dwelaniyah was enduring the little boy was in the defendant’s firing line.’
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When interviewed by police, Robinson maintained that Dwelaniyah’s death had been entirely accidental and that it was in some way the result of his choking on food.
She claimed to have cleared a blockage from his airway after his collapse and before the ambulance arrived.
She maintained that the burn injuries were also entirely accidental and had been caused by Dwelaniyah trying to run a bath and being burned by the shower head. She said that she treated them herself because she did not think that they were too bad.
Mr Wright said Robinson now accepts using the bamboo cane to beat her child, saying she was ‘required to do so in order to adhere to the teachings of the holy book’.
Robinson denies murder and child cruelty. The trial continues.
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