The couple accused of inflicting fatal injuries on their 20-month-old child leave the Protea Magistrate's Court. Photo: Timothy Bernard The couple accused of inflicting fatal injuries on their 20-month-old child leave the Protea Magistrate's Court. Photo: Timothy Bernard
With six fractured ribs and a lung filled with blood, 20-month-old Samantha* was trying very hard to breathe but struggling to do so.
Each breath brought pain to her tiny body, making the simple task of sucking in air very difficult.
It was so unbearable for her to breathe, she eventually gave up.
Paramedics who rushed to her Randfontein, West Rand, home on March 2 last year found her dead - and badly bruised.
This prompted authorities to order further investigations into her death. And what they found was enough to have the police arrest her parents and charge them with murder, assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm, child abuse or deliberate neglect of a child, rape and sexual assault.
Samantha’s real name or that of her parents can’t be used to protect the identity of her siblings.
Testifying on Wednesday in the Johannesburg High Court sitting at the Protea Magistrate’s Court in Soweto, Dr Jessica Clair Meddows-Taylor described the many injuries that she found on Samantha’s body when conducting a post-mortem.
Samantha was underweight, her anus was completely open and the tissue around it was damaged, Meddows-Taylor said.
There was no evidence of whether it had been a penis or some object that had penetrated her.
There were abrasions around the vaginal opening that could have been the result of rubbing and slapping. There was no obvious penetration in the vagina.
Six of Samantha’s right ribs were fractured, and four on the left had been fractured before and were now healing.
There were abrasions on her left cheek, upper lip and the right-hand side of her chest. Her right lung was full of blood and bruised, and the lung tissue was lacerated.
She had a bruise on her abdomen, towards the pelvis. There was bruising on her forehead, liver and spleen.
The doctor said that while in some instances the anal opening tends to widen during post-mortem examination, in Samantha’s case the opening was significant and could have been because of repeated penetration.
“In this instance it was more open than I’ve seen in post-mortem findings,” she said.
Holding a bulb enema syringe in her hand, prosecutor advocate Riana Williams asked Meddows-Taylor whether there was a possibility that it could have left Samantha’s anus open like that after it had been administered to her.
The doctor disagreed. “If you look at the calibre of the nozzle, it is too small to have caused the damage found on the baby’s anus.”
When the couple’s lawyer, advocate Anton Lerm, asked the doctor whether pushing the nozzle into her anus could have been the reason why Samantha’s anus was in that condition, Meddows-Taylor disagreed again.
“If pushed further, it could have perforated the rectum,” she said.
Samantha has a twin brother, who is still alive, and her parents had another baby in March.
She was alleged to have been given to a woman known to her parents to raise shortly after she was born. When the woman relocated to Durban and asked to take her with, the parents are alleged to have refused and taken her away from the woman.
They gave her to another woman in the neighbourhood, but when she told them that she wanted to adopt Samantha, they allegedly refused and took her back in November 2011. She died on March 2.
Following Meddows-Taylor’s testimony on their child’s injuries, Samantha’s parents started blaming each other, resulting in Lerm quitting.
The matter has been postponed to September 3 to allow the pair to get individual lawyers.