The Court of Appeal has dismissed an anonymised father’s appeal against convictions for two counts of causing serious harm and one count of child cruelty involving his daughter, who suffered a traumatic brain injury and severe burns in July 2019.
The appeal concerned counts relating to a head injury inflicted by the father’s wife on 2 July 2019, burns and other injuries inflicted between 28 June and 2 July, and allowing the child to be assaulted during that period. The father was not at home when the head injury was inflicted. His appeal did not concern separate convictions for choking the child or neglecting her after the injury.
The father argued that the trial judge should have directed the jury to acquit because there was insufficient evidence of an express or tacit agreement between him and his wife, or that the injuries fell within any such agreement. He also challenged the judge’s directions to the jury, including how the judge explained joint enterprise and the required mental element.
The prosecution said the jury could infer an ongoing agreement to use violence from evidence of repeated assaults by both parents, the father’s own violence, injuries that it argued must have been visible to him, and his conduct after the child was injured. The evidence included testimony from the couple’s children about frequent beatings and a choking incident in which the father suspended the child until she lost consciousness. The court also recounted evidence that the father gave misleading accounts of the injuries and that the children were coached to say the child had fallen.
The appeal court held that the trial judge was entitled to leave the case to the jury. It said the evidence could support an inference of a campaign of violence by both parents, and that the jury could find the serious injuries were within the scope of a tacit agreement to harm the child. The court rejected the argument that the wife’s assault on 2 July necessarily went beyond that agreement.
The father also argued that the jury directions were inadequate, including that they did not sufficiently address his defence or clarify that mere presence was not enough to establish joint enterprise. The appeal court found the directions clear when read as a whole. It noted that, when the jury asked for clarification, the trial judge told them they had to be satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that the assault was part of a common design before they could convict the father. The court also concluded that the statutory duty to protect a child had been explained in the context of the child-cruelty counts.
The Court of Appeal rejected both grounds and dismissed the appeal against conviction. It did not make a new conviction or sentence order in this judgment.