A mother and her boyfriend have been jailed for 3 years after nearly killing their 5 year old daughter by forcing her to sit in ice bath for three hours as punishment for ‘misbehaving’
The woman, Georgia Newman and Jordan Michael were jailed for making the girl sit in a freezing cold ice bath until she was ‘minutes from death’.
The two, who are both 29, inflicted the cruel punishment for up to three hours because she ‘misbehaved’, Leeds Crown Court heard.
According to a Facebook post, the court heard how the couple panicked after she became unresponsive and attempted to warm her up before eventually calling 999.
When paramedics arrived they found the young girl lying unconscious, blue in the face and frothing at the mouth.
The girl later suffered a seizure and was put on a ventilator, and doctors previously said they expected her to succumb to the trauma after her core body temperature plummeted to 25C – about 12C less than normal.
Doctors eventually used a heated blanket to raise her temperature, and even a bladder wash to push warm fluid through her body, prosecutors told the court.
Prosecutor Richard Woolfall said jm court how paramedic could also not straighten out her body because she was so stiff from the cold.
A medical expert even said in court the torture was akin to someone who had been floating in the North Sea and had never known anyone survive from such extreme hypothermia.
But against the odds, the girl is now alive and well and lives with her biological father.
After their arrest, Newman claimed the child had slipped and hit her head, and Kilkenny said he had no idea why she was cold.
Police found out he had previously Googled what would happen if a child was placed in a cold bath for 45 minutes, the court heard.
When interviewed, the child told the police it had been Kilkenny who had put her in the bath, at the direction of her mother, for her misbehaving.
Defending lawyer Newman, Alex Menary said the mother was heavily pregnant at the time and had anxiety and depression.