First published on 
By Rob Kidd, Otago Daily Times
File photo. Photo: RNZ / Nate McKinnon
A prominent sportsman is accused of fracturing more than a dozen of a baby's bones, using "significant force".
The defendant, whose name is suppressed at least until verdict, has been charged with injuring with reckless disregard (or assault in a family relationship, in the alternative) and his trial began at the Dunedin District Court this morning.
The Crown said the child's injuries were most likely caused by squeezing or crushing force to the boy's torso, resulting in at least a dozen fractured ribs and a broken collarbone.
Counsel Anne Stevens KC, though, said her client was a "responsible man" and there had been no incriminating evidence gathered by police, despite them interviewing him three times and intercepting his cell-phone communications.
Crown prosecutor Richard Smith said the child, born in 2023, was a "difficult baby", who suffered from wind, constipation and sleep issues.
On 16 July that year, the boy's mother went to the gym, leaving the defendant in sole care, the court heard.
She cut her session short when she received a phone call from the man saying he was unable to settle the boy and she returned to find her son crying in his bassinet and the defendant in another part of the room.
"The Crown case is that [the defendant], struggling with an unsettled baby lost his patience, perhaps only briefly, and squeezed [the boy] with sufficient force to cause those fractures," Smith said.
In the days following the alleged violence, the mother heard a clicking or popping sound in the infant's chest and was advised to go to the hospital.
There an x-ray appeared to show one fractured rib on the child's left side.
But Smith said the process of x-raying babies was notoriously difficult given their size and inability to remain still.
A few days later, they returned to the hospital where doctors found more than a dozen fractures.
Smith said medical experts would give evidence during the trial that the injuries would have been caused by force, rather than by accident or by the child's low bone density from vitamin-D deficiency.
While the defendant was under investigation, police covertly intercepted his communications and the prosecutor said at least one of his calls would be played for the jury.
Stevens said fractures in infants were not evidence of abuse, only cause for suspicion - "and suspicion does not equal guilt".
She told the court the defence would be calling expert medical witnesses of their own who would cast doubt on the Crown's theory.
"There are several other possible explanations for these fractures," Stevens said.
"Not a great deal of force is required to cause rib fractures in babies."
The jury trial is scheduled to run for at least two weeks.
- This story was first published on the Otago Daily Times.
