A jury in Aberdeen has convicted a former NHS worker of poisoning a young child with “industrial amounts” of medication and leaving him looking like “someone from Auschwitz”.
A jury took just over one hour to find Tracy Menhinick unanimously guilty of wilfully harming the boy, who was aged between three and six at the time.
The child cannot be named, but it is understood he has since recovered.
The trial, which lasted 19 days at the High Court in Aberdeen, heard 5,500 pages of evidence and medical records relating to the youngster and his failure to gain weight.
Menhinick, from Aberdeen, was found to have given the boy “industrial amounts” of the laxative lactulose, which resulted in his growth being stunted and led to his hospitalisation.
As a result of this, the boy underwent needless operations which left the boy with permanent disfigurements and impairments and endangered his life.
One expert witness said the child had resembled a survivor from a concentration camp when admitted to the hospital weighing less than 10kg at the age of five.
Wheelchair user Menhinick, 52, broke down as the verdict was read out this afternoon.
Lady Drummond deferred sentencing for steps to be put in place for Menhinick to be imprisoned and said: “This is a serious offence, it involves you deliberately harming a child and putting his life at risk – and abusing all trust that was placed on you as his carer.
“This warrants significant custody.
“It is very unusual to grant someone bail at this stage, given the seriousness of your conviction.
“However, I do appreciate your health conditions and one of them requires you to be fed gastric fluid through a tube.
“If you were to be remanded immediately, the prison service would have to have steps in place to ensure that continues – I am told that is not in place today.
“So, for that reason, I am not going to remand you today.”
Child given ‘industrial amounts’ of laxative
Fiscal depute Paul Fearney urged the jury to convict and told them to “set aside any revulsion” they might feel.
He spoke of the “transformational” change in the boy after Menhinick was removed from being his carer and told them: “The one piece of truth that may have slipped from the lips of Tracy Menhinick, after the lactulose results were revealed was when she said – ‘I was the only constant’.
“This is a difficult crime for any of us to comprehend, but the evidence shows that it happened, and it happened at Tracy Menhinick’s hand.”
He urged the jury to ignore the idea that a “phantom nurse” had administered lactulose to the child, who was said to have looked like “someone from Auschwitz”.
Emeritus professor in paediatric gastroenterology at Oxford University Dr Peter Sullivan gave evidence and told the court he came to the conclusion the boy must have received “industrial amounts” of lactulose.
The boy had been admitted to hospital in October 2016 amid concerns for his weight loss and explosive diarrhoea – and at that time Menhinick was closely observed by child protection officers.
No evidence was found of Menhinick poisoning the child at that time.
Dr Sullivan was asked if the medical staff at Royal Aberdeen Children’s Hospital had investigated all possible causes for the boy’s weight loss, to which he replied: “Yes, they did.”
Fiscal depute Paul Kearney asked what conclusions he had drawn.
Dr Sullivan said: “It was beyond reasonable doubt that he had been administered significant quantities of lactulose.”
He explained from reading the boy’s medical notes from hospital that he had been settled overnight, but once Menhinick had been to care for him, he would suffer from explosive diarrhoea within hours.
He added: “He was having slugs, big slugs of lactulose between waking up in the morning and then collapsing at midday.
“When it is given as a therapeutic dose, it does not have a catastrophic effect, but if an industrial dose is given, it will rapidly suck a lot of water from the bloodstream into the bowel, resulting in a drop in blood pressure and he would become extremely unwell.”
Menhinick was removed from caring for the boy after a test result from Great Ormond Street Hospital confirmed lactulose was present in his stool sample.
Dr Sullivan said the boy’s condition “dramatically” improved once Menhinick was no longer allowed to care for the child and he concluded Munchausen by proxy was the reason.
Munchausen by proxy is a mental illness where a person either makes up fake symptoms or causes real symptoms to make it look like the child is sick.
The prosecution also said Menhinick had been able to “predict” when the child would have an episode and that she had pursued more invasive treatments.
The court also heard that a bottle of lactulose had been found after her house was searched.
Great Ormond Street Hospital’s consultant gastroenterologist Dr Keith Findley gave evidence and said he didn’t think the medical staff at Aberdeen had “thoroughly” investigated the child.
He told the court that the “catastrophic” watery losses the child was experiencing was “of course” due to lactulose poisoning, adding: “At times he was losing 10% of his body weight.”
He compared the child as looking like “someone from Auschwitz” because he was so thin – weighing just 9.6kg at the age of five.
The court heard that after these losses, the child would become “floppy” and would often need to be resuscitated.
Defence agent Frances Connor had urged the jury not to believe the “spin and twist” the Crown had put on the situation.
Menhinick – who worked for more than 10 years as an auxiliary nurse at Royal Aberdeen Children’s Hospital – was ordered to appear at Glasgow High Court on March 19 for sentencing.
