Mother handed suspended sentence after baby's accidental drowning

A young mother from Cospicua, whose nine-month old daughter drowned in the bath, has been handed a suspended sentence on account of her youth and her circumstances at the time of the incident.

The case dates back to August 2012 when the woman, who was 17 at the time, was found to have left her child alone in the bath for 18 minutes whilst she was in another room, chatting online with a friend.

Magistrate Claire Stafrace Zammit had heard heart-rending testimony from the child’s grandmother, who had gone along with her son, the father, to collect the child. She was met at the door by the accused in a state of panic and described how, later on in hospital, the grief-stricken young girl had begged doctors to save her daughter.

The girl’s probation officer had presented a report on the girl’s difficult and underprivileged background, highlighting the fact that she had spent most of her childhood in care because of abuse at home.

Baby Roselana drowned in a bath while unattended

It explained how, after getting pregnant at the tender age of 17, the girl had “to learn how to be a mother, on a day-by-day basis.” It described the child as giving the mother’s life a sense of purpose and quoted the accused as saying that her daughter was the only happiness in her life.

In her sentence, which makes reference to previous judgments and authoritative legal authors on the subject of involuntary homicide, the magistrate held that the accused was a young mother who was doing the best she could to give her child the best upbringing possible and had failed to foresee the accident.

The court described the act of leaving a nine month-old child alone in a bathtub for longer than a few moments as highly negligent of the accused. She should have easily foreseen the dangers of leaving her daughter alone when she went to chat on Facebook, it said, and this behaviour constituted culpable negligence.

The magistrate found the young mother guilty of involuntary homicide and sentenced her to two years imprisonment, suspended for three years. In addition to the suspended sentence, the court imposed a supervision order to address the young woman's problems.