Dad admits shaking newborn, but denies other injuries

A father who admits shaking his newborn son to death denies that he was the one who caused other significant injuries to the baby boy.

His son was eight weeks old when he was rushed to hospital with a catastrophic brain injury.

Initially the father denied involvement, but confronted with a diagnosis that his son was incompatible with life, he confessed to killing him in August 2021.

The little boy's life support was turned off on August 31. His father pleaded guilty to child homicide.

That wasn't the first time the baby had been taken by ambulance to hospital.

Two weeks earlier he had been diagnosed with a brief resolved unexplained event after his mother walked in on his father giving the baby a bath and noticed he was blue and floppy.

Reviews after his death of chest X-rays taken when the baby was two and six weeks old revealed rib fractures in multiple stages of healing.

The baby boy also had fractures to his arms and legs caused by severe blunt force traumas and pelvic fracture attributed to a high energy blunt force trauma.

The Victorian Supreme Court justice who will sentence the man has been asked by prosecutors to find that the father caused those injuries.

His mother and maternal grandmother were the only other adults left alone with the child, the court heard.

The father, then 32, initially denied shaking his newborn son when interviewed by police when the boy was in hospital, but after his then-wife confronted him with medical evidence he confessed. 

He then phoned police and told them he had "a little bit, not profusely, not hard but I did shake him a little bit".

The man's barrister told the court post-natal depression can and does affect men following the birth of a child.

She suggested his mental health following the birth declined and he was impaired to an extent with his depression.

He was the primary caregiver for the youngest of his three sons. His then wife, who no longer has anything to do with him, was recovering from an emergency caesarean.

His lawyer pointed to the pressures of raising a small child, the lack of sleep and fatigue he was feeling, as well as the fact he was working during COVID-19 lockdowns.

But the judge pointed out that those factors applied to every parent.

During the boy's short life his father searched online to find out how long a baby could go without oxygen before brain damage, and signs of a brain bleed after a fall.

He told police that he dropped the baby off a change table, but that he hadn't told his then-wife because the baby seemed fine afterwards.

He also googled "newborn bruises", "how long can a newborn take to suffocate" and "brain damage signs in newborn".

The man, who has been free on bail, was taken into custody on Thursday.

"It's alright. I love you," he told his mother as he was led from court.

He'll be sentenced at a later date.