Once more: Child abuse is cheap in Australia

See the previous post here of Nov. 29

A father who became his four-year-old son's tormentor, abused him for days and ignored his slow death could walk from prison in four years. Justice Peter Evans yesterday sentenced Shane Michael Shanks, 29, who pleaded guilty to his son Danny Dell's manslaughter, to 10 years' jail. He will be eligible for parole in October 2010.

Danny's maternal grandfather Leigh Dell angrily branded the sentence pathetic and said Shanks had robbed Danny of a long life. "If I shot you, I'd get 20 years," he said. "If I stabbed you, I'd get 20 years. "I can beat a child to death over a two-week period, basically torture a person to death, and do less than five years. "I'd like to go back to hanging." Danny's grim-faced mother Crystel Dell, 23, listened with her new baby Shenae who was born this year, months after her half-brother's death.

Justice Evans said Danny and his father had enjoyed a normal relationship that had descended into an utterly deplorable state for no clear reason. He said Danny had first shown signs of abuse two weeks before his death and concluded that Shanks had caused a great majority, if not all, of his injuries. "His abuse of his son extended over a period of days," Justice Evans said. He said Shanks had witnessed his son's deterioration but had not called the doctor because of his "selfish concern that it would reveal the extent of his abuse". "Horrendous as Danny's injuries were, they were treatable and, had he received timely treatment, his life may have been saved," Justice Evans said.

Danny died in October last year at the Royal Hobart Hospital after his father had called 000, claiming his son had fallen from a bunk bed and was "spewing out of his nose". A friend of Shanks saw Danny five days before his death in a distressed state walking from his bedroom to the bathroom to vomit.

Justice Evans said Shanks had failed to protect and provide for Danny and instead had become "his son's tormentor and ultimately the instrument of his death". Doctors found "very, very, very extensive superficial bruising" on Danny's body, probably caused by multiple beatings of the head, abdomen and chest. A doctor who examined Danny's battered body after his death said an implement had likely been used to inflict the extensive bruises on his pelvis, buttocks and thigh. She said the bruising around his neck and the angle of his jaw was consistent with his having been forcibly grabbed around the throat. The autopsy report listed 79 separate or composite signs of violence or injury and concluded head injuries and bruising probably contributed to Danny's death. Another potentially fatal internal injury was probably inflicted three days to a week before the death when Danny was trailbike-riding with his dad.

Shanks was originally charged with murder but prosecutors then offered him the opportunity to plead to manslaughter.

Report here




(And don't forget your ration of Wicked Thoughts for today)