Nursery worker found guilty of manslaughter

[LadyEloise1]

Such a dreadful case.
A nursery worker Kate Roughley, has been found guilty of manslaughter when a 9 month old baby, Genevieve in her care at a nursery died after being placed face down, tightly swaddled and strapped to a bean bag and covered with a blanket.
She left the obviously distressed baby girl in that position for 1 hour and 37 minutes.
Beyond horrific.
Where were the other adults at that nursery ?
How could they allow it to happen ?

The poor wee baby and her grieving parents.
How can they ever get over that

Really?? 14 years?? For killing a completely defenceless baby? The maximum sentence for manslaughter is life imprisonment. What in God’s name do you have to do, to get that sentence, if you don’t get it for such a cruel, twisted, heinous crime? I’ve just read of a case of fraud last year where the perpetrator got 13 years. How will those poor parents feel that justice has been done for their baby girl? It beggars belief.

14 years is an embarrassment - she will be out well before that little girl would have even finished school were she alive.

The owners of the nursery need to be charged as well for there to be any sort of justice imo

"She won’t do half time in custody for a case of this nature. Likely 10 years and the rest on licence with some pretty stringent conditions."

No. She'll do 7 in custody and 7 on licence. It doesn't matter what "nature" it is. In fact she'll be likely assessed as low risk both on release and whilst in custody as her licence conditions will prevent her from working with children.

Do you work in this field?

The judge has said she will serve two thirds of the sentence in prison and the rest on license. So she will be released early, but not as early as 7 years

I've now read the sentencing and the judge did say she will serve 9 years 4 months in custody. It used to be, and generally still is, partly due to prison overcrowding, that any sentence apart from a life sentence would have half served on licence.

As for the "stringent" licence conditions and custodial and pre-release risk assessments. These will all be low and minimal.

I’ve just submitted a request to the Attorney General’s Office for a sentence review on this case. Anyone can request a Crown Court sentence to be reviewed, if they think it is too low. It’s an easy process on the gov.uk website.

They need to go after the Nursery owners though.
From all I've read, this wasn't just one evil woman, this was a Nursery being run with massively illegal ratios. So many safeguarding concerns it is difficult to know where to begin, and that is all down to the owners.

They do need to go after the owners, but while a poor staff/child ratio might contribute to inattention, lack of supervision of children, inappropriate levels of care (e.g. timely changing of nappies) and accidents happening, and obviously needs to be addressed, the death of this child was not an accident, or due to an overworked member of staff not able to give a child her full attention. It was as a result of a deliberate, sustained (over a period of 90 mins.) targeting of a baby by using forcible, face-down restraint which any reasonable person might suppose would compromise the ability of the baby to breathe, compounded by a deliberate failure to take any action to alleviate the observable distress of the baby over a prolonged period as she fought for her life. No amount of understaffing or poor working conditions can begin to excuse or explain even a millisecond of this hideous person’s actions. She, and she alone, is fully culpable, and in my opinion has got away with murder.

Oh, I am not underplaying what the individual has done, by any means, but 16 babies ??

This isn't a case of being one child over ratio.

It isn't a case of being a few minutes whilst someone attended to something else.
There is the lack of supervision (as in staff member to manager)
There is the lack of anyone looking at the CCTV and thinking 'WTF?'
There is the lack of culture of any staff member to challenge, or report, or anonymously whistle blow what was going on. This wasn't a one off event.

The woman was evil and clearly not fit to be working in a Nursery, but the owners have to take responsibility for not being aware of that, and responding to it long before this poor little one was killed.

It's all so awful.

I've seen bean bags at nurseries but they are tiny and more for a safe place for under twos to SIT

Think that's happening in a few weeks

Well done @maudelovesharold
I'm not in the UK so wouldn't be eligible to do so.

Are you able to share a link?

Dreadful.
Gigi only attended for 5 days in April, and was killed on her 3rd day in May.
So sad.

Hope this works…
https://www.gov.uk/ask-crown-court-sentence-review

Thanks @maumaudelovesharold I have filled in the form. It was super quick and straightforward and I'd encourage anyone else who thinks the sentence is too low to do the same.

@WittyFatball

*I doubt she thought anything of the parents.
She was just stressed and suffering with compassion fatigue. She'd forgotten these babies were real, live, feeling human beings and just saw them as irritants making her day even harder.
The culture of the nursery was that rough handling, disrespectful and bullying attitudes and strapping crying babies to beanbags was normal. She'd treated babies like that all the time, this time she just went too far.
It's like when you get treated badly by nurses in hospital - to them, it's just another long, stressful day full of people demanding things and making their job harder. Some will then take all that out on their patients.

I see that another worker has now been charged with ill treatment towards other babies so it is clear this behaviour was the norm there. Even with CCTV.*

This really resonated and I think you've nailed it.

Poor, precious babies - and I mean this in the plural. But of course, mostly poor precious Geneivieve

Poor little girl. Never even seen a summer. 😭

I can't believe there are any children remaining in that nursery. Beyond sad.

I despair of the sentences handed out for people like this evil, evil bitch.

I hope she gets treated the way she deserves to be in prison and her family disown her.

Oh my !!!

I feel physically sick.

Just sent the email template from lullaby trust to my local MP.