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| Darren Newton |
A man who murdered his girlfriend's 15-month-old son after months of filming himself abusing the little boy has been jailed for life.
Darren Newton, of Earby in Lancashire, England had denied killing Charlie Hunt but admitted 12 counts of cruelty. The baby died of head injuries in November 2009.
The prosecution at Manchester Crown Court said Newton, 32, took videos on his phone for "pleasure".
He must serve a minimum term of 24 years before applying for parole.
The jury took 40 minutes to find the factory worker guilty of murder and one count of child cruelty. They cleared him of another charge of child cruelty.
Newton named the video clips "crying, no toys in pen, ahhhh", "squeezing toe in cot", "two minutes of pain" and "shivering no water".
The latter was taken on a November night when Charlie was naked in an empty bath.
'Futile death'In one graphic clip, titled "Happy slap", which was filmed two weeks before Charlie died, Newton was seen to slap the child 13 times on the head as he screamed and cried.
Jailing him, Justice Stephen Irwin ordered that the video clips be preserved so the parole board could watch them before he is eventually considered for release.
He told him: "It was spiteful and cruel behaviour. It was also inexplicable to any normal way of thinking.
"It was a series of repeated acts of cruelty for no obvious motive other than the wish to be cruel.
"Anyone who watches the video clips of some of what you did - and I'm convinced you recorded only some of what you did - will genuinely struggle to understand why you came to do this.
"Eventually you killed him. It was a futile and wasteful death of an innocent toddler."
This report is from BBC News. There is more here.
2 comments:
"The prosecution at Manchester Crown Court said Newton, 32, took videos on his phone for "pleasure"." How does anyone get pleasure from torturing another human being or animal for that matter? I wonder what his childhood was like and if that contributed to his sick and cruel behavior.
It breaks my heart to think of that poor boy and what he went through. JR
Yes J. It upset both of us too.
It gives me a very sick feeling because we don't know how many others there are out there like him.
But yes - it's certainly a valid point to wonder what his own childhood was like because it's likely this behaviour was in response to his upbringing or his experience.
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