A nursery worker has been found guilty of killing a nine-month-old baby girl who died after being strapped face down to a beanbag for more than 90 minutes.
The court heard how Genevieve, known to her family as Gigi, was left for one hour and 37 minutes swaddled in a blanket and strapped face down to a beanbag in the baby room at Tiny Toes on 9 May 2022. Roughley, who had worked at the nursery for 17 years and ran the baby room, denied manslaughter and an alternative charge of child cruelty, insisting she did not cause the girl’s death.
“Genevieve’s death was not a terrible and unavoidable accident. We say it was unquestionably terrible but it was wholly avoidable. As the evidence demonstrates in this case, it was the treatment meted out to Genevieve by Kate Roughley which was the direct cause of her death. Her death arose as a direct consequence of the unsafe sleeping environment, the unsafe sleeping arrangement to which she had been deliberately placed.