What’s a baby’s life worth?

Jackson Bailey D’Aloisio lived just 42 tortured days. When he died after weeks of being beaten, punched, slapped and shaken by his father he was suffering from head injuries, multiple rib fractures of differing ages, damaged liver and spleen caused by blunt force trauma, a fractured left leg, damaged lungs and viral pneumonia caused by the broken ribs. With time already served taken into account his father will walk free from jail in less than four years. So what’s a baby’s life worth? According to the courts, not much.

Jackson’s father Douglas D’Aloisio was sentenced in Victoria’s Supreme Court yesterday after pleading guilty to manslaughter. The Director of Public Prosecutions originally refused to accept that plea and intended to prosecute D’Aloisio for murder. But he changed his mind when he discovered that D’Aloisio was going to claim he was suffering from psychiatric illnesses – depression and compulsive obsessive disorder – at the time of the killing.

Justice Geoffrey Eames said that despite the mental illnesses, D’Aloisio was aware of what he was doing during the attacks on Jackson and knew that they were wrong. But he went on to hand down a sentence that was, in the judge’s own words, “substantially less than would have been imposed had you not been suffering mental illness at the time of the offence”.

The court was told that D’Aloisio, 31, regularly punched Jackson in the chest, shook him and gave him “moon slaps” – hitting him on the head with the heel of his hand. Here is how Justice Eames described Jackson’s final day:

“…whilst you were having coffee, you heard your son “whinging”, in your words, and you went inside to check on him. Because ‘he was carrying on’, as you put it, you shook him and punched him to the chest.

“You then grabbed him around the neck, lifted him and shook him. His neck was completely unprotected. You then wrapped him and put him back in the cot. As you said to the police, ‘I wrapped him up, heard him whinging a bit, and I clouted him in the ear hole’. You said you did that quite hard, a couple of times, whereupon your son went quiet.

“ He then started crying again and you punched him in the stomach or chest, two or three times. You then walked out the bedroom and shut the door. You lit up a cigarette and finished your coffee.

“Upon returning inside the house to make another coffee, you heard your son crying, again. You gave him the dummy, which he spat out. You then punched him a couple of times in the chest. You picked him up, tried the dummy, and once more he spat it out. Then, in your words to police, ‘I clapped him in the head a couple of times’. You shook him again, this time holding him under the arms. You closed the door and left the bedroom.

“A friend later arrived, unexpectedly, at your home. He brought some beers, which you were sharing with him. You went to check on the baby and, as you said to police, ‘I could hear him whinging and carrying on and I thought, f***in’ not now, not now. I went in there, had a quick look, tucked him in, put his dummy in and he spat it out and I hit him on the forehead a couple of times’.

“You described hitting him with the heel of your hand two, three or four times, with more force applied after the first blow. He was lying in the cot. You told the police ‘and then I’m just going to have a little drink, I punched him a couple of times in the chest again and shut the door and went out’. You returned to your friend and continued drinking, displaying no signs, at all, of any loss of control nor, indeed, of any agitation.”
Jackson was found “seriously ill” in his cot shortly afterwards by his mother, who had returned home from a doctor’s appointment. Paramedics were unable to revive him.
When police first spoke to D’Aloisio, he “omitted to mention” he had struck Jackson. Only later, after the cause of death was established, did he confess. He told police that he had started beating his son when the baby was only three and a half weeks old. He assaulted him two or three times a week before Jackson’s death on 22 February 2005. The attacks intensified towards the end.

Four days before the baby’s death D’Aloisio had given him “a couple of ‘moon slaps’, one to the front and one to the side of his head”, because he “whinged” during lunch. Three days before the death D’Aloision punched Jackson in the chest, picked him up and shook him by the neck and slapped the back of his head after the baby started crying. The day before the death D’Aloisio punched Jackson a number of times in the chest and “clapped him a couple of times on the side of the head” because he spat out his dummy. Later he hit him on the side of the head two or three times because the baby was crying.

Justice Eames said it was “quite inappropriate to describe Jackson as a temperamentally demanding baby”. “At worst, his demanding behaviour occurred over only six weeks, and it may well have been that much of his crying was in response to his earlier injuries,” he said. “You do not claim, and there is no evidence to support any such claim, that your mental illness rendered you incapable of controlling your actions, and unable to appreciate that they were wrong.”

But he went on to sentence D’Aloisio to eight years jail, with a non-parole period of five years – which the judge said was lower than normal. Deducted from the five years is the 470 days D’Aloisio has already served on remand. The judge said he was taking into account D’Aloisio’s mental illnesses, good previous record and the remorse he had shown.

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