A man in his 30s who repeatedly abused his four- to five-month-old daughter, leaving her permanently disabled, had his prison sentence reduced on appeal. The court cited stress built up while caring for the infant, his attempts to help her recover and the absence of a prior criminal record.
The Ulsan division of the Busan High Court's first criminal panel, presided over by Judge Yoo Jung-woo, on the 16th overturned a lower court ruling that had sentenced the defendant, identified only as A, to four years in prison and imposed a three-year term instead. A was indicted on charges of violating the Act on Special Cases Concerning the Punishment of Child Abuse Crimes, which covers aggravated bodily harm through child abuse, and the Child Welfare Act.
The panel kept in place orders requiring A to complete a 40-hour child abuse treatment program and barring him from working at child-related institutions for five years.
A was sent to trial on charges of abusing his daughter five times between February and March last year, shaking her up and down and throwing her so that her head struck the ceiling because she was crying.
The girl lost consciousness and suffered a subdural hemorrhage, requiring two brain surgeries. She was later diagnosed with a brain lesion disorder as a lasting effect of the injuries and registered as a person with a disability.
The lower court found that A had abandoned his duty as a father to protect his child and had inflicted permanent disability through repeated abuse. It also pointed to his attempts to make excuses and evade responsibility in sentencing him to four years.
The appeals panel accepted A's argument that the sentence was excessively heavy.
The panel said A took parental leave after his daughter's birth and cared for her, and that stress accumulated mainly while he handled her sleep routine appeared to have been one cause of the crime, as he momentarily failed to contain it.
It also weighed his own efforts to help his daughter recover and the fact that he had no previous criminal punishment. Taken together, the panel concluded, it was difficult to view him as posing a high risk of reoffending.
The panel said the girl was expected to need continued rehabilitation treatment and financial support to pay for it. It added that it treated as a mitigating factor the need for A to return to society after serving his sentence and fulfill his responsibilities as a father, including paying for her treatment and upbringing.