Mother found guilty of breaking toddler’s ankles, not getting medical help

An Edmonton woman has been found guilty of intentionally breaking her two-year-old daughter’s ankles.

At her trial in late 2018, she testified that her daughter had fallen off a toilet in March 2016, and then was reluctant to walk for several days.

It was the girl’s grandparents who eventually brought her to a Wetaskiwin hospital. She was transferred to the Stollery Children’s Hospital in Edmonton after X-rays confirmed fractures to both ankles and older, healed breaks in one arm.

Medical experts testified that a fall from a toilet could not have caused the damage to her ankles.

“In my opinion, the evidence supports only one reasonable conclusion: the injuries to (the girl’s) ankles were caused by intentional human agency, not by any accident,” Court of Queen’s Bench Justice Wayne Renke said in his verdict, recently posted online.

Both the mother, who was 22 at the time of the offence, and her partner testified that the two-year-old showed aversion to being touched near her feet, would crawl instead of walk and refused to play for several days. The mother said she believed the child was suffering from the flu. She said her feet were not swollen or bruised.

Because the girl was left for several days without medical care, the judge said the mother’s “conduct fell far short of meeting the standard of the reasonably prudent parent.”

After a 13-day trial, he found her guilty of failing to provide the necessaries of life, causing a child to be in need of intervention, aggravated assault and assault causing bodily harm. She has not yet been sentenced.

There’s a publication ban on the name of the child and the mother is identified only as S.N.A.