A mother accused of repeatedly beating her 11-month-old son before killing him today claimed his 23-month-old brother is responsible for the injuries that led to his death.
Emma Wilson, 25, allegedly took pictures of her baby son Callum before deliberately hurting him and then taking more pictures of his injuries.
Wilson is accused of doing this several times in the weeks leading up to her son’s death when she allegedly caused him ‘catastrophic’ and ‘unsurvivable brain injuries’.
Callum was rushed to John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford in March, 2011, with a detached retina which had caused him to lose his sight and he also had multiple fractures and bruises all over his tiny body. He died two days later.
But Wilson today told the Old Bailey that Callum’s older brother is to blame for the injuries – claiming he was jealous of his younger brother.
Jurors were shown a series of photos Wilson took of Callum in the weeks leading up to his death in which bruises and scratches can clearly be seen on both his face.
But Wilson says Callum’s older brother, then aged 23 months, inflicted the injuries because he was ‘jealous’ he no longer had all her attention.
The 25-year-old told the Old Bailey she never hurt her son and claimed: ‘It’s the best thing in the world being a mum.’
Wilson told the court how she didn’t realise she was pregnant when she had her first child in April 2009.
Shortly afterwards she got pregnant with Callum after a one night stand, but she didn’t know she had conceived again until two months before he was born as she continued to have periods and hardly put on any weight.
However, she chose to put him in foster care for the first seven months of his life because her then boyfriend didn’t want anything to do with him.
It was only when the trainee nail technician bumped into Callum and his foster mum in a Mothercare in Slough in May 2010 that she went about getting him back.
He was returned to Wilson, then 23, in November 2010 who says at that point her ‘life was perfect.’
But over the next few months when social workers visited them at her Windsor home, they spotted scratches on Callum.
The jury heard she even lied to staff and parents at a play group in Maidenhead claiming Callum was her cousin’s son, providing a false surname and address for him.
On one occasion, she claimed bruising on Callum’s face had been caused by an older sister, who in fact did not exist.
But she said the reason she made up lies was because at that time no one knew Callum was hers and she couldn’t deal with the embarrassment of people asking questions.
‘It was so difficult just to say this is my son, he’s been in foster care for seven months of his life,’ she said.
Within months staff at the playgroup began to notice that Callum changed from a ‘happy, smiling baby’ to an ’emotionless and listless boy’.
But Wilson claims his injuries must have been caused by her other son who would ‘throw things at Callum and push him over’.
‘He was boisterous and would get generally jealous of Callum’, she told the court.
She claims she tried to seek advice from her parents, GP and a health visitor on how to deal with the sibling rivalry.
‘My other son would be rough with him. He liked to grab Callum’s face and would leave him with scratches and bruises,’ she told the court.
Callum was rushed to hospital with head injuries in March 2011 and died two days later.
A post mortem revealed the baby had also suffered fractures to nine ribs, to his right arm and left leg and were caused two weeks before he died.
