A boy who was left with lifelong disabilities when his stepfather “played with him too hard” and failed to take him to the hospital when he was a baby likely died as a result of ongoing complications, a coroner has found.
An inquest into the boy’s death was held in December last year, where Coroner Sarah Tyler heard the boy had suffered a traumatic brain injury when he was just eight months old, and later died aged 11 from illnesses likely caused by ongoing complications from his disability.
The boy, who cannot be named for legal reasons, ultimately died due to deteriorating respiratory functioning and pneumonia, and the perforation of his bowel in December 2021.
In her findings, published this week, Tyler said the inquest aimed to answer a complex question around the boy’s death, and whether his injury at eight months old had precluded his death at such a young age.
“In determining [the boy’s] manner of death, I must be mindful of the fact that no person has ever been criminally convicted of inflicting injuries upon [the boy],” she said.
However, Tyler said understanding how he came to be so severely disabled was an integral part of the young boy’s life.
He was born in 2010, and lived at home with three siblings aged between four and seven, his mother and his stepfather, who had only moved in five months prior.
“The family home was described as ‘chaotic’ with a cockroach infestation, hygiene concerns, and limited toys, food and bedding throughout the home,” Tyler said in her findings.
The inquest was told that, on the evening of his injuries, the stepfather had been playing with the boy about 11pm when he “tossed him into the air”, and caught him while he was laying on his back on the bed.
“[The boy’s] then stepfather said he might have played too hard with [the boy] because he was drunk, but that he didn’t mean to hurt him,” Tyler said.
The stepfather told police he realised the boy had stopped breathing, and his neck was slowly getting weak. He ran to get the boy’s mother, who checked on him. She said he was breathing, and she placed him in a cot with a bottle.
Later in the evening, the parents both noticed the boy was deteriorating and became concerned. However, they only determined to take him to hospital about 18 hours later, when the boy’s grandmother came over to visit and noticed something was wrong with him.
“When [the boy] was finally taken to hospital by his paternal grandmother … it was evident that [the boy’s] health had undergone a fundamental and irreversible change,” Tyler said.
The child was taken into care before he was discharged into the care of his grandmother, who had originally taken him to the hospital. However, he suffered ongoing profound and lifelong physical disabilities as a result of the incident and would need 24 hour care for the rest of his life.
“Time was of the essence for [the boy] and there was an unacceptable delay on the part of those responsible for [the boy’s] care, [the boy]’s mother and then step-father, in seeking medical assistance for him after it should have been obvious to them that he had been seriously injured. How the injuries occurred could not be determined,” the inquest found.
He stayed in the care of his grandmother, but later fell significantly ill as a result of his ongoing underlying health issues.
Tyler said the boy’s neurological impairment led to an “expected” deterioration of his condition and as a result, appeared to have caused his death.
The boy’s mother also died fewer than four months after the boy did.
“I am not satisfied that the cause of [the boy’s] death should appropriately be found to be natural causes,” Tyler found.
Neither the stepfather nor the mother ever fully explained how the boy came to get his injuries, and Tyler said it meant she had to make an open finding regarding his death.
“I acknowledge that many years intervened between [the boy] suffering an abusive head trauma and his death, and note that [the boy] received long-term palliative care over many years before his decline and death,” she said.
“In those circumstances, there is a degree of uncertainty that remains not only about how [the boy’s] abusive head trauma occurred, but also its relevance to the death.”
The coroner ultimately praised his grandmother’s intervention in the boy’s life, and said her commitment to providing him a safe and loving home after he became disabled was “nothing short of inspirational”.
She also praised the Department of Communities and the Child and Adolescent Health Service for their care and help over the boy’s short life.
“The loss of a child is an unspeakably tragic event, and I cannot begin to fathom the grief and pain which [the boy’s] family have endured since his death,” Tyler said.
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