A 26-year-old dad has pleaded guilty to slapping and shaking his one-month-old baby girl and threatening his mother-in-law with a kitchen knife.
Appearing at the High Court yesterday, Chung Kei-yuen admitted he was taking out his frustrations on his newborn daughter, Apple Daily reports.
As a result of the abuse, the daughter — now 2-years-old — is blind, in a vegetative state, and relies on a life support machine.
The defendant pleaded guilty to three counts of child abuse, and one count of criminal intimidation.
He is expected to be sentenced at noon today, and faces up to 10 years in jail.
According to on.cc, Chung initially denied the charge after being arrested in January last year. The case was originally going to be heard in the District Court in January however the judge — who said he had not seen a more serious case of child abuse, and needed to take a break to compose himself — decided to refer the case to High Court given the seriousness of the girl’s condition.
Apple Daily reported that Chung’s girlfriend, a 23-year-old woman surnamed Cheng, gave birth to their daughter on November 29, 2015.
Chung was 24-years-old at the time and was under a lot of stress working night shifts as cook in a restaurant, according to his defense team.
The court heard that Chung had trouble sleeping during the day because his newborn cried constantly. He blamed Cheng and her mom for not doing anything to stop her crying, it was reported.
Cheng noticed the first signs of abuse when she saw a red mark about 3 centimeters-long on her daughter’s face, to which Chung said he was just pinching her cheeks.
The prosecutors told the court that all three instances of abuse took place in December 2015.
The court also heard that after the third instance, on December 28, 2015, he did not take her to the hospital and instead went online and entered the search terms “baby is not crying, body turning cold.”
Cheng’s mom — who had moved in with the family — then came into the room and asked “is she dead? We need to call the police.”
This prompted Chung to go to the kitchen,take out a kitchen knife and threaten his mother-in-law.
He later calmed down and a few hours later they took the baby to Tuen Mun Hospital, where doctors concluded she suffered from “abusive trauma.”
In mitigating statements, defense lawyers claimed Chung felt remorse for what he had done, loves his daughter, didn’t realise how serious the damage he inflicted on his daughter would be, and just wanted to hold his daughter and tell her he’s sorry.
They also moved to cast his mother-in-law in a negative light, saying that Cheng’s mom — who moved in with the family to help look after the baby — would often smoke in front of the baby causing her to cough, and that the house was often left in a mess while he was working long shifts at work.
