Dad gets home detention for REPEATEDLY fracturing limbs of infant daughter (New Zealand)

Once again, we see all the excuses and coddling made for abusive fathers.

They want to tell us that a 19-year-old can't understand that it's wrong to inflict such horrible injuries on a baby, and then seek no medical help? This isn't even a case where Dad is said to have "snapped" (which is also BS), but a case where he broke this baby's limbs some 7 TIMES. 

And all he gets is home confinement. Disgusting....

Dad is identified as JAMES ROBERT HALL.

The pro-daddy/anti-child judge is Mary Peters. 

http://tvnz.co.nz/national-news/crown-appeals-sentence-fracturing-baby-s-limbs-5175582

Crown appeals sentence for fracturing baby's limbs

Published: 12:56PM Tuesday October 30, 2012

The teenage father sentenced to home detention for repeatedly fracturing his baby's limbs should have been jailed for about two years eight months, the Court of Appeal has been told.

Family of the toddler did not want to comment after sitting through the appeal hearing at Wellington today where a Crown lawyer argued for the sentence on James Robert Hall, 21, to be increased. 

Annabel Markham said the Crown's suggested sentence of about two years eight months was constrained by what the Crown prosecutor Russell Collins had suggested when Hall was sentenced in Napier in August.

Collins candidly admitted that the four-year starting point he had submitted was on the low side and could have been higher, Markham said.

From the starting point deductions were made for guilty pleas and Hall's youth. He was 19 when the last offence occurred.

High Court judge Mary Peters imposed a sentence of 12 months home detention.

"Hall pleaded guilty to having caused grievous bodily harm to his infant daughter with intent to injure her in March 2011 and having caused her grievous bodily harm with reckless disregard for her safety on various unknown dates between her birth in November 2010 and the discovery of her injures after the last time she was hurt.

The names of the girl, now just under two years, and her mother are suppressed. The child is said to be walking as a child her age should.

Markham said the baby was eventually found to have had a recent fracture in one of her legs but six other separate fractures to her limbs.

Hall aggravated the situation by taking no steps to alleviate her suffering. Four times in one month the girl was taken to the doctor and he sat by and let the true situation go undiagnosed, Markham said.

Instead of the fractures being discovered suggestions were made that a mosquito bite might have gone septic or that a car seat might have caused bruises. 

Hall's lawyer, Scott Jefferson, said Hall had been ill-equipped to cope as a teenage father, still struggling with problems from his own upbringing and thinking he was not bonding with his baby.

"That was the reality of his inadequacy," Jefferson said.

The Court of Appeal reserved its decision.