Mum Alexandra Walker, 25, and boyfriend Harrison Simpson, 22, are accused of sexually assaulting and murdering two-year-old Isabelle Welsh
Isabelle Rose Welsh suffered 21 broken bones, a court heard
A mother and her new boyfriend are accused of the murder and sexual assault of a toddler who suffered 21 broken bones in the weeks leading up to her death, a court heard.
Isabelle Welsh, two, collapsed at her home in Hartington Close, Thornaby, Teesside, having suffered a “massive head injury”, and could not be saved, jurors were told.
Her mother, Alexandra Walker, 25, and Harrison Simpson, 22, deny murder, allowing the death of a child, sexual assault and child cruelty and are on trial at Teesside Crown Court.
The couple had got together only last summer and Simpson became a regular visitor to Walker’s home, spending “a lot of time” with the little girl, jurors were told.
On September 13, Walker made a 999 call about her daughter who had collapsed, and paramedics found Isabelle at the foot of the stairs, without a pulse and gravely ill.
Richard Wright KC, prosecuting, said she was covered in bruises, particularly to her head, neck, abdomen, back and private parts, her nappy contained blood and she had vomit on her face.
She was rushed to hospital by ambulance, but despite the efforts of specialist doctors, she died in the early hours of September 14.
The prosecution said Isabelle had been violently shaken, her spine over-extended, and her head hit against a hard surface such as a wall or the floor.
Mr Wright said: “For weeks this child had been violently assaulted and her death, by that terrible head injury, was simply the end point in that campaign of violence to which she had been subjected.”
The prosecution case was that both Walker and Simpson had “ample opportunity” to harm the toddler and in such a small, two-bedroom house “each must have been aware of the abuse”.
Mr Wright said Walker took her daughter to the GP and then hospital 11 days before she died, when Isabelle’s leg was found to be fractured, and despite the concerns of some medics, she was discharged back into her mother’s care.
The prosecution said this leg fracture was “no more of an accident than the fatal head injury”. A post mortem examination found that Isabelle had suffered fractures to 21 bones and she was “covered in bruising the result of forceful gripping”, Mr Wright said.
The prosecution said Walker, by her own account, had waited two weeks before reporting the fractured leg.
Mr Wright said: “When Isabelle was gravely unwell in the week before she died no medical assistance was sought, and even on the day she died, after her heart had stopped and she appeared to all intents and purposes to be dead, Alexandra Walker only called an ambulance when her stepfather told her to, long after she must have known her daughter was critically ill.
“All of this, we will invite you to conclude, was not because of panic about Isabelle, or a failure to appreciate how ill she was.
“To the contrary, Alexandra Walker and Harrison Simpson each plainly knew how ill she was, they knew that because they had caused her injuries and their failure to summon help from doctors and finally the emergency services, was an act of self-preservation.
“They knew the questions that would come and had no convincing answer for them.”
Mr Wright said the couple had an “unhealthy” relationship in which drink and drugs were a feature, and it led to the decline in Isabelle’s care before it built to her being “subjected to regular violence at home by these defendants”.
He said, unusually, there was CCTV captured from two cameras installed at Walker’s home.
Mr Wright read an early message from Walker to her new boyfriend in which she said she was the primary carer for her daughter and was in the final year of studying forensics.
The trial continues.
