Caregiver jailed for toddler's manslaughter

A foster caregiver was jailed today for six years and six months for the manslaughter of a toddler who died at Auckland's Starship Children's Hospital nearly four years ago.

Fourteen-month-old Melissa Sale had been in the care of Karen Alice Robinson at Paengaroa, in Bay of Plenty, when she suffered brain injuries, which Robinson said were sustained when she fell from a portacot.

Robinson, 35, who has been living in Hawera on bail, had been found guilty of manslaughter in August after a trial in Rotorua and was sentenced by Justice Lynley Stevens in the High Court at New Plymouth today.

Melissa died on January 8, 2006, at Starship after her life support was turned off.

She had been rushed four days earlier by ambulance to Tauranga Hospital and then on to Starship, where she had emergency surgery to remove a clot on her brain.

Robinson's lawyer, Rachael Adams, told the trial jury Melissa's death was an accident and Robinson "did nothing to harm the child in any way".

However the Crown said that on the day Melissa was injured, Robinson told a social worker and a police officer that she had shaken the child.

It was claimed there had been two incidents of traumatic brain injury to Melissa – one at least five days earlier.

The toddler's injuries included bruising to both ear lobes, abrasions on her cheek, bruising on her forehead and bleeding at the back of an eye.

Melissa and her older sister had been placed into the Paengaroa home where Robinson lived with her sharemilker husband and five children in November 2005.