A mum has spoken of her fury as a man was handed unpaid work after her young son suffered a cigarette burn while in his care.
Christopher Wrench was found guilty of child neglect following a trial at Aberdeen Sheriff Court last month.
The 36-year-old was in charge of the boy’s care when the youngster suffered a small, circular injury to his cheek.
He was later taken to hospital by someone else who spotted the mark and was concerned.
Now, Wrench has returned to the dock to be sentenced, and Sheriff Mungo Bovey handed him 200 hours of unpaid work and 18 months of supervision.
Following the conclusion of the case, the boy’s mum branded the sentence “disgraceful” and told of her horror at learning of her son’s injury.
She said: “It was painful for him. It was quite horrible.
“I felt kind of sick. That happened to my baby.
“I don’t know what happened. Nobody knows except Christopher.”
The mum said Wrench had shown “no remorse”, adding: “He doesn’t care. It didn’t seem like he had any emotion.
“It just seemed like he didn’t actually care that this happened.”
Asked for her thoughts on the sentence, with unpaid work and supervision, she said: “I think the sentence is disgraceful. It really is.
“I don’t feel it’s any deterrent. I think it’s ridiculous.”
Summing up the whole situation, the woman continued: “It’s been horrible. That’s it finished now and I hope we can move on.”
During the trial, it emerged that, at Royal Aberdeen Children’s Hospital, paediatric consultant Marianne Forrester examined the boy and said the wound was consistent with an “end on” cigarette burn.
Wrench denied the charge against him and was unable to offer a concrete explanation for how the injury occurred during a trial at Aberdeen Sheriff Court.
‘I’d seen a spot on his face and I just assumed he’d picked at it’
He suggested the injury could be a spot which the child had picked at, but that was rejected by Sheriff Bovey.
In finding him guilty, the sheriff said: “It’s not lost on me that Mr Wrench vehemently and persistently denied that he hurt the child, even accidentally.”
He went on to say he reached the conclusion that the child was injured as a result of being wilfully exposed to risk by Wrench and so found him guilty.
Now, Wrench, of Hoy Place, Aberdeen, has returned to the dock to be sentenced.
Defence agent John McLeod said his client was still unable to explain how the child came by the injury.
Sheriff Bovey ordered Wrench to carry out 200 hours of unpaid work and also imposed an 18-month supervision order.
During the trial, Wrench himself took to the witness stand and told the court: “Kids are kids. Sometimes you can’t account for how they hurt themselves.”
He accepted that he was a smoker at the time of the incident, but insisted he never smoked in the presence of children.
Asked about when he first noticed the injury, Wrench said: “I assumed it was a skin problem. Not a burn.”
He added: “I’d seen a spot on his face and I just assumed he’d picked at it and that’s what this was.”
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