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A father who murdered his five-week-old son through a horrific campaign of violent abuse has been jailed for life.
Michael Davis’s attacks on his son, Ollie, left the newborn baby with 40 bone fractures, including breaks to the skull, collar bone, joints in both arms and legs and 23 rib fractures.
The young boy was found unresponsive at his home in Leicester in 2017 – and was later pronounced dead in hospital, with a post-mortem confirming his death was from the delayed effects of a broken neck.
It is believed this fatal injury had occurred up to eight days before his death, and had led to the compression of the spinal cord which had caused him to stop breathing.
During his police interviews, 29-year-old Davis offered no explanation for how his son had suffered these injuries, and was seen shrugging his shoulders and telling officers: “I haven’t got any idea of how this might have happened, no.”
Following a trial, he was convicted of murder and has now been jailed for life with a minimum term of 22 years.
After saying he was sure that Davis had caused all the injuries during four separate overnight “episodes” of violence, Mr Justice Cotter added: “At least five different mechanisms were required to cause this terrible array of injuries.
“Michael Davis, I have no doubt that during the night you became frustrated and angry and this led to terrible violence.
“You assaulted him on multiple occasions. The attacks in their various forms were also brutal – in particular the fatal neck injury.”
In not seeking medical help, Davis had shown “callous indifference” to Ollie’s suffering, the judge also said.
Ollie Davis’ mother Kayleigh Driver was jailed for seven years by Mr Justice Cotter for allowing the death of a child and allowing serious physical injury.
The judge told the 31-year-old: “You must have heard Ollie’s cries after he was assaulted, as you were together in the bedroom. This must have woken you up.”
It later emerged that social services did not take early opportunities to assess the family despite the significant previous involvement both parents had had with children’s social care.
In a report compiled by Leicester Safeguarding Children Partnership Board in 2017, they said that while the abuse suffered by Ollie was not forseeable, there were lessons to be learned from the case.
It found that there had been a lack of “professional curiosity” about Davis’s history and circumstances, and that certain contacts and referrals about Ollie had not been treated with “sufficient care, thoroughness and gravity”.
Ollie’s mother was found not guilty of murder and was also cleared of a separate charge of causing grievous bodily harm with intent.
However, she was found guilty of causing or allowing the death of a child, and causing or allowing a child to suffer serious physical injury.
