Dwayne Gordon’s cruelty was revealed when a 17-month-old child, who we will not name, was taken to the John Radcliffe Hospital in January 2019 with facial injuries.
The A&E doctor who examined the child, Dr Janet Craze, told Gordon’s trial in May that a slap mark on the boy’s face was “something, sadly, all paediatricians have seen before.”
The child also had a large red mark around his mouth, which Gordon claimed was caused by his son chewing on his beaker.
Gordon was watching the child at the mother’s Oxford home while she went out with a friend.
At around 9 p.m. that night, he messaged the woman, saying the boy’s “face is f***ed.”
Concerns about his face and neck injuries prompted doctors to order more extensive tests, including x-rays, which revealed that the boy had broken the arm bones near both wrists at some point in the previous weeks.
His nursery kept track of more than a half-dozen times when he came in with injuries.
A member of the sports organisation ‘Soccer Tots’ stated that he attended a session in December 2018 with ‘deep’ bruising and bloodshot eyes.
Gordon, 34, had denied a number of charges, including causing grievous bodily harm and child cruelty, but pleaded guilty to GBH, causing actual bodily harm, and cruelty on the sixth day of his trial.
The boy’s mother, Katie Lake, 30, raised concerns about the boy’s injuries in messages to the Northampton-based man, according to the court.
Gordon, however, was said to have dismissed her concerns.
Lake was docked alongside the father of her son, who was born after a one-night stand and around the same time as another woman gave birth to her child, because she had ‘wilfully exposed’ the boy to ill-treatment at the hands of his father.
Judge Ian Pringle QC sentenced Gordon, of Kingsland Gardens, Northampton, to 40 months in prison on Thursday.
He’d previously been convicted of aggravated burglary and wounding.
Lake, of Thames View in Abingdon, was sentenced to nine months in prison, suspended for two years.
She is required to attend up to 20 probation sessions.
