Foster mum tells court harrowing details of boy who will die from cruelty inflicted on him

The foster mum of a little boy left blind and so badly brain damaged he will eventually die from the cruelty inflicted upon him told a court, "I will never hear him say I love you".

Newry Crown Court heard from the foster mum of the “very young child” who was the victim of the shocking attack and treatment perpetrated by 35-year-old Christopher Fulton and his wife Amanda, 36.

In what is a legal first in Northern Ireland, the harrowing and heart-rending Victim Impact Statement was read verbatim to the court directly from the witness box.

“If the sky were made of parchment and I were to fill it with words of how much he means to us, it would still fall short to describe the love that we have for him,” she told the court, adding that when she first saw him hospital literally fighting for his life she thought, “here lay a totally innocent victim whose only crime was being born.”

The court heard during the Fultons’ five week trial last October how their very young victim was left blind and severely brain damaged as a result of Christopher Fulton’s attack which caused a litany of catastrophic injuries.

On Friday, March 21, the actual consequences of the couples’ actions were laid bare in stark, heartbreaking terms.

Describing a life filled with medical appointments, assessments and treatments, the little boy’s foster mum told the court how her beloved foster son “will never see the faces of those who love him and care for him so deeply.”

“He will never see the sunrise. He will never know what the ocean looks like. He will never see the toys that Santa left for him under the tree,” she told the court highlighting that even if he could see them, the little boy is so significantly brain damaged “he wouldn't understand what they were.”

“He can only communicate his distress by crying, pulling his ears until they bleed, or banging his head with his fist and grinding his teeth. He lets me know he's helping with smiles and giggles. He will never be able to ask me for sweeties or ask for just one more bed time story.

“I will never hear him say I love you,” she told Judge Peter Irvine KC, who heard that with medicines and food being given through a tube, his birthday cakes lie untouched and “he will never experience the satisfaction that comes from being hungry and getting to eat his favourite food.”

“As a result of his injuries, I will never have the privilege of teaching him how to ride his first bike. He will never be excited on Christmas Eve and wake me at 3am to see what Santa has left for him. He will never know what it is to get his first paycheck, his first car, his first home.

"He will never have the opportunity to get married and have children and grandchildren of his own. and instead, he has forever been condemned to a life of being totally dependent on his caregivers for every single aspect of daily life. He has been robbed of his independence.”

Throughout the foster mum's 15 minutes of testimony, Mrs Fulton was seen to repeatedly wipe away tears.

Her estranged husband Mr Fulton, sitting two feet away on the other side of a prison officer and the man the jury convicted of causing these heinous injuries, sat stoney faced, his arms folded throughout, not a single flicker of emotion appearing to cross.

Not even when the little boy’s foster mum recalled that doctors had told her the bombshell news that his injuries “are life limiting” did Mr Fulton show any emotion.

After seven hours and 45 minutes of deliberations over two days at the end of the five week trial, the jury found Mr Fulton unanimously guilty of inflicting grievous bodily harm with intent and two charges of child cruelty by wilfully neglecting the young victim.

While Mrs Fulton was acquitted of GBH with intent and one charge of child cruelty, she was however unanimously convicted of causing or allowing the child to suffer significant physical harm and a further charge of child cruelty in relation to wilful neglect.

The court heard during the trial and prosecuting KC Toby Hedworth again opened on Friday how the very young child was unresponsive on the morning of 7 November 2019 at Fulton’s home at Rockfield Gardens just outside Ballymoney, but despite their concerns, neither Mr nor Mrs Fulton called a doctor for three hours.

When the little boy was eventually seen by the GP at 4pm that day, it was plainly obvious to him that with a pupil blown and the infant’s fontanel hard, “he was a very sick chid.”

Initially he was rushed in an ambulance to the Causeway Hospital where a scan uncovered a significant head injury and he was then taken to the Royal Belfast Hospital for Sick Children where he endured lifesaving brain surgery.

It was there, the jury heard, that doctors discovered the true extent of his life threatening injuries including:

One paediatric consultant after another testified how the injuries were consistent with those that might be expected as a result of a high speed car crash or of an infant being dropped “from several stories high” and were so serious that he would have died without medical intervention.

The doctors all agreed that an incident involving blunt force trauma such as a punch or being struck against a hard surface like a wall or floor, as well as shaking with an adult compressing the rib cage, would be a possible explanation for the “non-accidental injuries".

By their verdicts the jury declared they were sure beyond reasonable doubt that Christopher Fulton struck the boy so hard he fractured his skull and lacerated his liver, that he shook him with such ferocity that all his limbs sustained fractures and at the time he was squeezing him so hard he broke 15 ribs.

The jury also declared they were satisfied that it is not the first time that Fulton, a hulking 6’3” 16 stone fully grown man compressed the little boy’s chest with such force that 12 other ribs had been broken before and were healing.

Mrs Fulton, the jury decided, did nothing to help and “failed to take such steps as you could reasonably have been expected to take to protect” the victim.

Her defence SC Seamus McNeill conceded that “I cannot gainsay” a suggestion by Judge Irvine that having witnessed her husband’s rough handling of the child “she was fully aware of the potential aggression that could be directed at the victim.”

Mr McNeill told the judge however that the “reality of life” was that she could not simply walk out of the home she shared with her co-defendant, “it would have been extremely difficult for her to do, if not impossible.”

The senior barrister also conceded the judge’s further suggestion that he would be “entitled to draw an inference that they concocted a lying story to the police out of self interest”.

Ken McMahon KC, acting on behalf of Mr Fulton, highlighted that he had no violent convictions in his past and also how the doctors had agreed the catastrophic injuries could have resulted from a momentary loss of anger and control.

Judge Irvine warned that going by guiding cases and given the assessment that Mr Fulton is a dangerous offender, his starting point in deciding the sentence is between 19 and 22.5 years before he takes account of aggravating and mitigating features.

Remanding the pair back into custody, he said he would deal with the case on 4 April.

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