Category: causing death of children or vulnerable adults

‘ ‘‘Baby-shaking”, or “baby-shaking syndrome” is a colloquial term used to describe the situation where the prosecution allege that a baby has either died or suffered serious injury as the result of being shaken. In a large number of these cases the prosecution are able to show that at the time of the causative event the child was in the sole care of its parents; the difficulty that arose historically however was when it was not possible to prove which of the two parents was the actual perpetrator. Prosecutors often found themselves in this scenario, with not enough evidence to conclusively prove which parent caused the harm to the child and neither parent prepared to implicate the other. However, on 21st March 2005, Section 5 of the Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Act 2004 became law, and it meant that prosecutors could now take a different approach, one that didn’t require them to single out the primary offender.’

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KCH Garden Sq, July 2020

Source: kchgardensquare.co.uk