A father has been cleared of battering his baby after telling a jury his ex-wife has exaggerated the seriousness of the child’s injury.
The 34-year-old was acquitted after telling Exeter Crown Court a mark on the cheek of the 11-month old baby was a small bruise and disputing the mother’s claim that the boy looked ’as if he had gone ten rounds with Mike Tyson’.
The father said some of the bruising came from an earlier accident and the only injury he inflicted was when he grabbed his son’s cheek to stop him thrashing around in his cot.
The 34-year-old father, from the Newton Abbot area, denied child cruelty and was found not guilty.
The mother alleged she found a bruise with visible finger marks the morning after she had been at work and had been told by her husband that the child had been unsettled and crying constantly.
She said there was a black bruise on the cheek and eye which made it look ’as if he had gone ten rounds with Mike Tyson’.
She said she did not report the incident to the police because she felt guilty about leaving her child in the care of her husband while she went out to work.
She also lied to a friend who saw the bruising a few days later, telling her it was caused by a fall on to a garden parasol.
The father denied assaulting the boy. He said the bruise was not as bad as his former wife suggested and the baby already has a mark from an earlier fall.
He said he had unwittingly pinched the baby’s face as he reached into the cot to stop the child thrashing around and banging his face against the bars of the cot.
Mr Gareth Evans, defending, pointed out that the mother had made no complaint until the break up of the relationship, when issues of custody were likely to arise.