A court has heard that either or both of her mother and her new lover sexually attacked, raped, and killed a youngster who had 21 fractured bones prior to her death.
After suffering a “massive head injury” in September of last year, two-year-old Isabelle Welsh was the victim of a “campaign of violence” before passing out at home in Thornaby, near Middlesbrough. The next day, she passed away in the hospital.
For weeks this child had been violently assaulted, and her death by that terrible head injury was simply the end point in that campaign of violence,” prosecutor Richard Wright KC stated at Teesside Crown Court.
Both her mother, Alexandra Walker, 25, and her partner, Harrison Simpson, 22, deny child abuse, sexual assault, and murder.
When paramedics responded to Walker’s 999 call for her daughter on September 13, they discovered Isabelle unconscious at the base of the stairs.
Wright reported that she had vomited on her face, blood in her nappy and bruises all over her body. Isabelle’s head had struck a hard surface, her spine had been overextended, and she had been severely shaken.
Despite the efforts of expert physicians, she passed away in the early hours of the next day after being taken to the hospital.
According to the prosecution, Isabelle was severely shaken, her head struck a hard surface like the floor or a wall, and her spine was overextended.
Jurors were informed that when Walker and Simpson started dating last summer, he frequently visited Walker’s house and spent “a lot of time” with the young girl.
Walker and Simpson had “ample opportunity” to hurt the toddler, according to the prosecution, and “each must have been aware of the abuse” in such a little two-bedroom home.
Wright claimed that when Isabelle’s leg was discovered to be fractured eleven days prior to her death, Walker took her daughter to the hospital.
She was released back into her mother’s care despite some medics’ misgivings, the court was informed.
The prosecutor said that Walker’s leg fracture was “no more of an accident than the fatal head injury” and that she had neglected to report it for two weeks.
Wright said: “Even on the day she died, after her heart had stopped and she appeared to all intents and purposes to be dead, Alexandra Walker only called an ambulance when her stepfather told her to”.
The pair “knew the questions that would come,” so he described it as “an act of self-preservation.”
According to Wright, Isabelle was “covered in bruising, the result of forceful gripping” and had 21 fractures, according to a post-mortem investigation.
The prosecutor said that alcohol and narcotics were part of the couple’s “unhealthy” relationship.
The defendant allegedly referred to Simpson as a “paedo” in correspondence that Wright received between Walker and her mother.
Walker reportedly told her mother that Simpson thought it was “weird” to see her with Isabelle rather than by herself, and the court heard that he had washed the child himself.
Wright added that in August of last year, Walker had looked up the Middlesbrough sex offenders register online.
Days after the youngster was admitted to the hospital, Walker’s mother was heard telling him on CCTV footage from the house, “She looks like she is being abused.”
Walker advised her to “chill out” though.
Later today, the trial will proceed.
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