A Local Authority v The Mother & Ors

The father's oral evidence was consistent with the social worker's contemporaneous note that he was the one who requested the meeting. He said:

The social worker's visit to the house is documented in her note of 17 January 2025. She was shown the bedroom. Her written note was that the father left G "at the edge of the bed, halfway down the bed". When he returned to the room, "he picked her up, tried to call out to her, she did not respond, and he shook her before taking her downstairs".

In the witness box the social worker told the court she expressed her view to the father at the time that the shake he showed her could not have caused the injuries. She said the father told her that now there were some things he knows about first aid, he would have handled the situation differently.

The father's second statement is dated 18 February 2025 and he shows where G was when she was on the bed by indicating on a photo with an arrow. The arrow indicating where G was placed is clearly, in my view, in the centre of the bed and this is inconsistent with the evidence he gave in the witness box which was both confused and confusing.

The independent social worker reports on 30 April 2025. She met the parents for the first time in March and then several times for the purpose of the assessment throughout April. She records that:

She makes a detailed account of what the father told her on 5 October, which I will quote in full:

I pause to interject that this may be a factor that weighs in favour of the father's veracity. He is telling the independent social worker something which goes against the advice he understood his criminal team to be giving him.

It appears that the father showed the independent social worker the shake. "He showed me how he shook her forcefully", she writes, "as she was not waking up." She concludes that:

When she draws her report together, her conclusion is:

This is consistent with the father's case that he had an evolving understanding of the impact of shaking on a child. In the witness box he was asked when he realised he may have caused the injury by shaking her. "Gradually", he said:

The broad impression the independent social worker gives is of parents who are loving but inexperienced and lacking in the knowledge of safety.

The parents' response to the findings of the Local Authority were due on 22 August 2025, and I have looked on the portal to see exactly when those responses to the findings were uploaded. I cannot find each parent's individual response but the composite version of the schedule was uploaded on 17 September 2025. The mother's position was that she wished for all avenues for natural causes to be explored. The parents raised birth trauma, a fall from the bed, the cabinet incident, and, on the mother's case, G's fragile brain as possible causes. Each mentioned the father trying to rouse G. The father says he "shook G briefly to awaken her", but denies shaking her in a "sever (sic) or uncontrolled manner". The father asserts that he has "been transparent from the start".

The father's video is also annexed to his September 2025 statement, and the mother filmed it. She could not recall in the witness box whether she took the video before or after her signed statement. The limitations of this video, which I have watched a number of times, are clearly set out in the expert's report and are a matter, in my view, of common sense. No re-enactment with a doll is likely to show exactly what happened. It is right that the video misses out aspects of things that happened on that morning that everybody accepts happened, like the father's phone call to his brother. The father's statement sets out the father says he has "tried to re-enact my physical actions and also my emotional state", but the father's emotional state in the video is not at all in keeping with how he describes his feelings in his witness statements nor with the oral evidence of the family members who saw him when he came downstairs. In the video he looks reasonably calmed and not at all panicked. Clearly there are limitations on the weight I can place on this video. However, as Mr Jayamohan said, spontaneously volunteering his observations to us:

Similarly, when the father handled the doll in the witness box he looked relatively gentle. I agree with Ms Croft that at times he looked deeply uncomfortable when he was demonstrating. Now, there could be many reasons for that: It could be that he is lying. It could be that he hates re-living an incident that is deeply traumatic for him. It could be that he cannot remember clearly. When he tried to demonstrate carrying G downstairs in the witness box, the head of the doll nestled in the crook of his arm. That does not sit easily with his accepting, in answer to Ms Croft, that G's head was bobbing as he went downstairs.

The aunt's evidence was very clear that the father was holding G with her spine to his chest and she showed us by hugging a cushion when she gave evidence. The aunt and uncle's accounts describe the family in complete panic.

In the witness box, the father said he was holding G horizontally. He demonstrated by lying her along his arm, again with her head in the dip caused by his bent elbow. I prefer the aunt's evidence. She was in less of a panic on the morning and I prefer her account. It is possible that the father underestimates how hard he shook G and how uncontrolled his carrying her down the stairs was. Dr Birch's view was that "on balance it is likely the shaking the father has described and put in the video was more vigorous than we are seeing". Ms Croft submitted that the father adds running downstairs to his September 2025 account to help explain the injury. As the analysis above shows, he is mentioned running downstairs in early accounts, starting with that first police interview on the day itself. Although it is fair to say the significance of the run downstairs was not highlighted by the father until much later in his evidence.

The third statement is 17 September 2025. He describes that for cultural reasons he has never changed G's nappy. He gives another description of 5 October in his statement:

Ms Croft correctly identified in framing her questions to the father that this was the first suggestion that running downstairs may have had a role in the injuries and the first time it is clearly set out in written evidence. When the father was asked, he denied that he added this detail and he denied that this was not really what happened.

His fourth statement is dated 22 September 2025. In this he exhibits the sick note for the rib fracture and he says:

The aunt and uncle's statements prepared with a solicitor's help do not add to any new information about the mechanism of injury from what they had told the police in October 2025. No mention is made in either of those statements of them being told by the father that he shook G.

The father's final statement on 19 December 2025 mentions G having a rattle, which is the first time he has mentioned that since he spoke to the police in October 2024, and he says: "I would say I was absent for a period of no more than five to seven minutes." He goes on:

I have set out in some detail and in chronological order what the father has told the professionals and the court. It is clear that the father's account has evolved and Ms Croft robustly cross-examined him on each iteration of what he said. But the important issue, of course, is the significance of those differences of accounts.

Of critical importance is the fact that the strength with which he shook G has been variously described and becomes more significant until by the time of the final hearing, when he is in the witness box, his case is that the panicked shake and the run downstairs without supporting the head could have caused the injuries. It is true to say that points of detail, as I have just looked across his accounts, differ across his accounts, for example: the length of time in the bathroom, the exact position he left G on the bed, whether he heard a cry from the bathroom, whether he heard a bump. The accounts vary. In some accounts he mentioned the phone call that were know took place to his brother. In some it is missing. Same goes for the rattle. Different accounts have different levels of details.

I have looked across at how he describes seeing G on the floor by re-reading the written accounts and re-listening several times to his interview to the police on 5 October 2024. He describes her variously as "struggling for breath" and that her "face was red". He describes her having "a runny nose". He describes her hands being stiff when he saw her and then limp when he picked her up. He says her eyes were half open but she was listless, floppy and unresponsive to simulation. Elsewhere he says she is floppy and unresponsive. It is described, or at least recorded by an independent social worker as a faint, and to the social worker on 17 July "as G did not respond". Elsewhere he says she was breathing but completely unresponsive and her eyes were closed. In oral evidence he said she was taking short breaths, her eyes were half closed and she did not respond, although he was unable to elaborate on that. When pressed he said: "Whatever happened, I have explained that."

The father's description of the state of G after the fall is therefore shifting across the evidence. Again, that could be for a number of reasons. It might be because he is lying. It might be because it is one of those rare cases in which a child appeared very unwell following a low-level fall. It might be the heightened level of distress at the time caused him to panic and he was not able to take in her exact condition. It may be over the course of time his memory caused him to elide what he saw before and after shaking her. On any analysis, this is a high-stress event which took place in a manner of seconds.

I turn now to the father's emotional state. In her interview on 5 October 2024 the mother says her husband came downstairs and "was terribly anxious and his hands were trembling". When asked what his face looked like: "Like somebody who was on the verge of crying, and his face was trembling" she said.

Lily Barnett records he was "clearly distressed and very upset". She describes him as "very emotional" on the way to the hospital and her colleague records Lily telling her that he was crying. The uncle told Mr Sampson KC that the father was "pale" and agreed "100 per cent" when asked that there was panic. The aunt said the father was not angry that morning. She described him as "very worried" about what had happened.

In his first police interview, 11 hours after the event, what is striking is how distressed the father becomes when he talks about finding G on the floor. One interpretation is that he is almost reliving this incident. When describing her to the police officer he says:

He becomes very tearful and overwhelmed in interview and says:

He describes himself when he found G as "crying". In the witness box his descriptions of how he felt was the most vivid aspect of the his evidence.

The family and paramedics clearly saw he presented as incredibly distressed and this is consistent with how he was in the police interview too.

This is what he said in the witness box:

He was asked about when he became very upset on 9 January 2026 when listening to the aunt's evidence, and asked by Ms Croft: "Do you think your emotions overwhelmed you?" he said:

The father was asked by Ms Croft:

He was asked:

He was asked: "You were overwhelmed on the morning of 5 October?" "Yes" came the reply. "You agree you were not in control of your actions?" "Yes" came the reply. "You agree your loss of control was why she got hurt?" "Yes, that could be the cause of it", he replied.

He accepted too that he was not in control of his emotions as he ran downstairs. He said: "I was not in my senses. I was not able to understand what was happening." He was asked: "How did you feel?" "My own condition was such", he said, "it was hard for me to control myself. I was not able to see her in that condition. I could not bear to see her in that condition."

Now, of course, these statements are open to a number of different interpretations. His heightened level of distress could be because he has done something wrong and he is full of self-pity. It could be because his narrative is correct and he was genuinely distressed. He did not follow what his wife advised and as a result his daughter, one of the most precious people in his life, was on the floor.

There is other evidence of the father being emotional. The independent social worker observed some crying and emotional, so much so that she recommends counselling. The social worker, who has been the allocated social worker since 2 December 2024, says initially he was very tearful. "He will cry when he struggles to manage his emotions", she said. Of course, those two observations both post-date the incident of 5 October 2024, but it is part of how he presents and how he comes across. I have already mentioned the panic attack in the police station when he was arrested.

Overall we have a picture of a man who maybe restrains his emotions most of the time, possibly for cultural reasons, but who can be highly emotionally labile, especially when it comes to issues around his daughter.

I look at evidence that the father has been frustrated or angry because Ms Croft invites me to find that the father is lying and that he shook G other than in a panic.

The evidence from the family is that there was nothing out of the ordinary that morning. The mother was clear that G was happy, not crying, when she left her with her father. She had heard nothing from the kitchen. The uncle and aunt did not hear anything until they were woken by the phone call from the father and then, shortly after, him banging on their door. We have no evidence of raised voices or excessive crying.

Ms Croft is quite right to point out that there is in the evidence in the bundle that the father can be frustrated. He was critical of the health visitor in the Midlands and criticised her for not giving them the right advice. He was frustrated that the police were investigating and did not want G to be transferred back to Newham Hospital. The current social worker gave evidence that when she first met him he said: "The previous social worker has ruined my life", but we left it there. "I thought we would have problems with this relationship but we have not", she concluded.

It is fair to observe that this evidence does not sit entirely easily with the family evidence that the father is uniformly lacking in any frustration or anger in any way and I do think they may have overstated his calmness of character. Ms Croft submits that the father may have got annoyed when trying to clear G's nose, and that he was annoyed and reacted angrily when he found her in the floor. She suggested he may be running late for work and shook G out of frustration. The father denied all of these scenarios. These scenarios require me to speculate which, of course, I cannot do that. There is some evidence of his annoyance in other contexts but it is fair to say there is no evidence of him ever being annoyed with G. As Mr Sampson KC rightly submits, there was no evidence of a crescendo of tension that might preface an angry loss of control. There are, however, those smaller stresses that I have mentioned already.

The father now accepts his panic shake could have caused the injuries and he does not seek to excuse or justify it. If the father is lying, it would be to cover up what he sees as a more blameworthy shake. His lie would have had to have been constructed and developed as a long-running deceit over a period of months. According to this analysis, the father would have had to calibrate his untruthful narrative to the emerging medical evidence. That is a high level of dishonesty. His decision to report what happened of his own motion to the social worker, to Dr Saggar, and to the independent social worker, before he had even read the medical reports, undermines that theory to an extent. The father has given his own explanation of why his case has evolved:

There is also this theme in his evidence and that of the mother that whatever he did was not deliberate. When he spoke of the police investigation in court, he said:

Elsewhere in his evidence, he said:

So there were a number of possible explanations for the father's evolving accounts, which are not mutually exclusive.

I now step back and look at the matter in the round, and remind myself again of course that the burden of proof is on the Local Authority.

It seems to me that the father's account of the bed fall, although sometimes inconsistent in detail, has been broadly unchanging. He left G on the bed. She fell from the bed and he found her on the floor and thought something was very wrong.

I do not think the father has made up the shake account to cover for a more egregious shake. It seems more likely than not that his final position is closest to what happened.

On the day in question there were stresses in the family life as well as the many positives that I have set out. The night before, 4 October 2024, the father has come home late and was making calls until 23.40. G had a cold and more likely than not woke in the night. The parents rose at 5.40 to pray and then went back to sleep. It seems to me very likely that the father would have been tired, having not had a day off since 22 September 2024 and working overtime to provide for his young family.

I accept the mother's evidence that G was happy and settled when she left her playing with the father. The father is not the main carer of G. The time he has with her in the morning I think is the only time he has alone with her when he is solely responsible. He is a first-time parent. I find it more likely than not he ignored his wife's advice to put G in the swing. This is a family who are very protective of their daughter and careful. I have mentioned how the mother puts her in the swing, straps her in, and puts her camera on when she is out of the room. This is a family that goes to the GP about minor childhood ailments like eczema and colds. It seems to me the father made an ill-judged decision to leave G on the bed in such a position she could roll off. She rolled off when he was out of the room and it is more likely than not that he started to panic when he entered the room and could not see her where he left her. I accept his evidence:

I find that the fall to the floor was, more likely than not, not the cause of the injuries. The medical evidence suggests that G was unlikely to present with an altered state of consciousness after the bed fall, or that any alteration would more likely than not have been at the minor end of the scale. The father shaking G was an unreasonable response to this, as was the run downstairs without the proper support for G's head. Rather than being capable of calming down, addressing G's state with a degree of detachment, the father was overwhelmed and unable to think clearly. Rather than being able to call 999 and assess her condition, he panicked and took her, shook her two or three times. I think he has underestimated the force he used when he shook her and that it is likely greater than he stated. He called his brother, and that would have involved, of course, trying to hold G and press the number in a panic, and then he ran downstairs, holding her in such a way the head was not supported.

I do find his actions meet the Re S test for threshold to be met. G has clearly suffered significant emotional and physical harm due to her father's actions. The harm is attributable to the care the father gave her on that occasion not being that which is reasonable to expect a parent to give her. He was told by the health visitor "never, ever shake a baby" and the shake and the uncontrolled run down the stairs were reckless and disproportionate a response to a fall from the bed. The father accepted as much of evidence by telling Ms Croft that now he has gone on courses he recognised it was dangerous and wrong. He told the social worker that "now he knows about first aid he knows that he could have handled the situation differently".

The shake was more likely than not a rapid significant acceleration/deceleration mechanism. The shake that the father gave was in such a state of emotional upset that the force used, although I cannot be categorical, was excessive, causing uncontrolled excessive flexion and rotation in G's head and clearly inappropriate. It would be such, if seen by an independent witness, there would be an immediate recognition it was inappropriate and a concern for G's well-being. The father said so much in evidence himself:

At times he has minimised the severity of the injury and I think this is in part self-preservation and in part because I have highlighted that distinction he makes in his own mind between deliberate acts of harm to a child and what he did. I do find his presentation of his case to the court has evolved and lacked clarity and it is not right to say from the court's perspective that he has given "a transparent account to all professionals involved", when, as I just have, I surveyed the documents filed. The reasons for this are complex and multifaceted but of course not primarily focused on G's welfare.

Dr Birch's evidence suggests the prognosis for G was unlikely to have been altered by an earlier history of the shake. I therefore do not think that she suffered additional harm as a result of a lack of complete openness. Ultimately the father does take personal responsibility and say: "I am not able to forgive myself. Because of me, my daughter suffered." I give him credit for taking that responsibility and for his willingness to learn and that is not something that a judge sees in all cases.

Ms Croft, in closing submissions, made it clear the Local Authority's position is the mother showed a lack of curiosity about the injuries and does not appear to have asked how the father shook her or been angry with him. The schedule of findings seeks the finding the mother has not provided an adequate explanation of the injuries and the injuries cannot be explained by the fall from the bed or the cabinet. Ms Easton KC submits it is unfair to expect the mother to reach a conclusion about the injuries before the court does. She submits the court should not expect the mother to be angry with the father as she is a calm person by nature and her culture and religion are relevant to her responses, and it is unreasonable for this court to expect her to react in a certain way.

I have looked back carefully at the mother's case at each stage. I have read from her first position statement in which she accepts the father's account and does not accept he caused the injuries, and again, use of this word, "intentionally". She raises the cabinet scenario as a possibility for the first time in her statement of 14 December 2024. She suggests birth injury, genetics, or other factors might be relevant in her response to threshold. The first time I can find her raising in evidence the possibility the father shook G to rouse her and that this may have played a part in the injuries is in her statement dated 16 September 2025 and in her response to threshold at that time. She says:

Her position at the final hearing, not before, is she accepts the injuries are not linked to the birth, including the retinal haemorrhage at birth or the cabinet incident. She accepted G did not have a medical condition that explained her injuries in the witness box. I make no criticism of the mother for that. These are complex medical matters. Even when translated, these reports are not easy, even for an educated layperson to read, and I do think it quite proper that the mother explored all these possibilities. To her credit, when surveying the entire medical evidence, she accepted it in its totality. I do not think she raised the cabinet incident to distract or mislead. I think that was a genuine attempt to explore what could have caused the injuries. In fact it is illustrative of the degree of care this mother has for G, that she would feel the need to share such a minor incident, just in case it was the cause.

Her oral evidence was that the first time the father told her he was shaking G was when he came back from the police station. It was clarified that she meant when they came back home on 14 October 2024. The first time she understood the father handled G in such a way that may have caused the injuries was when he came back from seeing his solicitor in December, 2024. Her evidence on this point is entirely consistent with the uncle and she explains all four adults spoke of it at this time. Her evidence was she did not, in December 2024, ask the father to show her what he had done and neither did he offer to do so. She took the video that the father presented in September 2025 and said:

Nevertheless she still set out in her witness statement that:

Like the father, her evidence repeatedly makes the distinction between something done deliberately and whatever it was the father did. On 16 September 2025 her statement says:

In the witness box, when asked about her statement and whether she now thought that the father did not shake G violently, she said: "He shook her harshly, but not ..." and here she used the English word, having started the sentence in his primary language: "... not intentionally." Later in her evidence she made the distinction between things unintentionally and things not:

Ms Croft argues there are other occasions when it was bizarre that the mother did not ask questions of the father, such as the loss of sensation in his left hand that he bit to show her he could not feel it, and again. Her evidence that she did not read the Red Book is arguably another example of a lack of curiosity. But the bottom line is this. The first time I learnt that the mother had been told by the father that he shook G as long ago as 14 October 2024, was in the witness box. I understand the mother's respect for her husband, which of course must be seen within the context of her religion and culture. She is an intelligent woman and she is able to set out her views clearly, as we saw in the witness box. It seems to me that like the father she has made this distinction between something done deliberately to harm a child and the father's actions that she does not view as intentional. She said she would have told if he had done it deliberately.

However, whether done deliberately or not, G did suffer harm and the mother could, after that October 2024 conversation, when she knew the father shook G, have told the medics or the social worker. Similarly, in her December 2024 statement, or any time thereafter, she could have set out what he told her on return from the solicitors and what they discussed as a family, albeit that may not have been easy for her. She has not asked that the shake theory the father raised was explored in the same way as her other theories about bloodshot eyes, birth injuries and G having a fragile brain, and that could be evidence of a lack of independent curiosity. She has, as the social worker observed, followed her husband's lead and her written case has aligned with his.

I do not find collusion or attempt to mislead, but I think at times they have both adopted this thinking that because the father's shake was not deliberate it was not so serious and there was less need to tell people in authority about it. I do find that the mother showed a lack of independent curiosity about the father's shake theory that was not child-focused. I do not think that goes to threshold and I do not think it is a reason to delay returning the child to her mother. I do not think it caused any significant harm to G but it is a factor to be taken into account when we look at the next steps and risk assessment, and in a moment we will do just that.

Maybe I am straying into those next steps but I would want the mother to know that, just like the father arranges to meet the social worker, she is allowed to do so too, on her own. I have heard that G speaks her parents' primary language, Gujarati, and English, and maybe - and here I stray into welfare matters - thought could be given to an English as second language class for the mother so that by the time G goes to school, the mother, like her daughter, will be able to speak to the parents, children, and teachers at the school gate in English and her primary language.

I know that G goes to a mother and baby group with the foster carer. Maybe the mother could join that group and so G can continue her part of the local community?

We will now turn to welfare matters. However, I wish, in closing this judgment, to again thank our interpreters. I am very mindful that through the course of this long judgment they have faithfully relayed what I have been saying.