A little boy sits on the couch, pale and lethargic.
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He keeps vomiting and refuses to eat for days.
The alarm bells should have been ringing.
He should have been taken to a doctor.
But he wasn’t.
Now he is dead, and his mother has been found responsible.
After almost three weeks of evidence from dozens of witnesses, it took the Supreme Court jury less than three hours to find the woman guilty of manslaughter by criminal negligence, returning the verdict just after 11am on Thursday.
They found her failure to get her son medical treatment in the five days before he died in Wollongong Hospital on August 3, 2012, was beyond irresponsible; it was highly criminal, and fell far short of what any reasonable person would have done in the same situation.
The child was rushed to hospital just before 4.30 that afternoon, after being found unresponsive in his cot.
Doctors did all they could to revive the boy, however he was pronounced dead 90minutes later.
The boy’s mother was originally charged with murder, but at the start of her trial at the beginning of February, prosecutors downgraded the charge to manslaughter by criminal negligence.
The woman, along with her current partner and the boy’s biological father, cannot be identified by order of the court.
But they’ve each had the chance to give their version of what led to the death of the toddler, described by many as ‘‘a happy child’’ who loved to watch television and eat Vegemite toast.
The biological father tried to blame his four-year-old daughter for injuries inflicted on the boy in the months and days before he died of what a pathologist said was the combined effects of a subdural brain haemorrhage and a perforated gut, which led to the development of peritonitis.
Doctors said both injuries were most likely the result of strong blows to those regions of the boy’s body.
Defence lawyers for the woman blamed the father for the injuries, saying at the times that doctors estimated the injuries occurred, the boy had been with his father.
They said the boy’s mother did not know about the assaults, therefore couldn’t know about his internal injuries, or that the symptoms of sickness he was displaying were anything other than a generic stomach bug.
However, jurors were not swayed by the argument, instead finding that she should have taken her son to see a doctor regardless.
The woman broke down in tears as the verdict was read out, apparently shocked by the decision.
She was remanded in custody until March, when a sentencing date will be set.
Her lawyer, James Howell, declined to comment.