A “loving and caring mother” who shook a baby she was looking after in a catastrophic loss of control was jailed for three years today.
Syeda Begum broke down at the High Court in Edinburgh and began sobbing in the dock as a judge told her he was sending her to prison.
First offender Begum, 29, was earlier convicted of assaulting the infant to severe injury and the danger of life by shaking the child the body. The attack occurred at Begum’s former home in Aberdeen on January 1 in 2017.
Lord Uist said a report prepared by doctors involved in the attack victim’s care said that when she arrived at hospital she was in “a critically ill state”.
The baby was found to be unconscious, cold and had poor respiration, and was also discovered to have sustained haemorrhages to the brain and eyes.
Lord Uist said he took into account that Begum had no previous convictions and has two young children for whom she is the full time carer.
He said expert medical evidence was that the victim’s injuries could have resulted from “an unplanned and momentary loss of control” by Begum.
The judge said he had asked himself whether it was a case that could be appropriately dealt with by a non-custodial sentence.
Begum began weeping as he told her: “I have concluded it cannot. What you did almost cost the child its life.”
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After the attack when the child was floppy and experiencing breathing difficulties Begum did not immediately call an ambulance but contacted a friend.
The judge said Begum had failed to disclose at the time what she had done making the task of the doctors treating the baby more difficult.
He added: “You have continued all along to deny your guilt, even after conviction, and have shown no remorse.”
Begum had denied assaulting the child at an earlier trial at the High Court in Aberdeen and told jurors: “I could never harm a child.”
Begum’s defence counsel Frances Connor had urged the judge to consider a non-custodial sentence and said it was difficult to see what public interest was served by jailing her.
Miss Connor said that Begum maintained her position of innocence over the offence, but added it arose from a “momentary, catastrophic loss of control”.
Lord Uist responded: “Which she does not accept.”
She said the impact of a jail sentence was likely to be devastating not only to Begum, who was described as a loving and caring mother, but to her children and husband and other family members.
Lord Uist said: “She is not here because she is a loving and caring mother. She is here because she shook a baby and caused the injuries which the baby sustained.”
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