Father Charged After Baby Boy Found With Brain Trauma And Fractures On Sunshine Coast

By The Times of Australia

A Sunshine Coast father has been charged after police alleged his nine-week-old son was left with life-threatening injuries, including extensive brain and eye trauma and multiple fractures.

The baby boy was taken to Sunshine Coast University Hospital just before midnight on April 24. Police say he was in a critical condition and was admitted to intensive care.

What followed was not a quick arrest at the hospital doors, but a weeks-long child protection investigation. Detectives from the Sunshine Coast Child Protection and Child Trauma Unit began working through how a child barely two months old had suffered injuries of that scale.

Queensland Police allege the boy’s father, a 30-year-old Currimundi man, was arrested at Warana on Saturday afternoon, June 6. He has been charged with one count of grievous bodily harm as a domestic violence offence against a child.

Police refused him bail. He is due to face Maroochydore Magistrates Court on Monday.

The charge lands after a public appeal and a lengthy investigation into injuries police have described as serious and suspicious. The boy’s condition at the time he was brought to hospital was critical. The alleged offence is now before the court, and the man is entitled to the presumption of innocence unless proven guilty.

The case is stark even by the blunt standards of a weekend police brief. The alleged victim is not a teenager caught up in a fight, or an adult assaulted in a street. He is an infant, nine weeks old, found with injuries that took specialist child trauma detectives to untangle.

Police have not released further detail about the circumstances inside the Currimundi home, nor have they publicly named the accused man. The child also cannot be identified.

For now, the known facts are narrow and grim: a baby was rushed to hospital late at night, doctors found catastrophic injuries, detectives investigated for weeks, and the child’s father is now facing a serious domestic violence charge.

The matter is expected to return to court on Monday, where the first procedural steps will begin and prosecutors will outline the charge now sitting against the 30-year-old.

Sources: ABC News and Queensland Police material syndicated by The National Tribune.