SPANKING KILLED YOUNG CHILD

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30937, 18 December 1965, Page 15

SPANKING KILLED YOUNG CHILD

(N.Z.P.A. Reuter—Copyright) LONDON, Dec. 17. A judge yesterday stopped a manslaughter charge against a mother whose seven-year-old daughter died after a spanking on the bottom.

There was absolutely no evidence that she acted unlawfully, Mr Justice Roskill told the jury at the Old Bailey Criminal Court in London.

He directed the jury to return a not guilty verdict on 32-year-old Mrs Kay Audrey Hewins, of Epsom Downs, Surrey. And he ordered that Mrs Hewin’s defence costs—£33o —should be paid out of public funds. The Court was told that

Mrs Hewins had been kept in Holloway Prison, London, for 14 or 15 days on a charge of murder. She was not allowed to go to her daughter’s funeral. Mr Brian Leary, prosecuting, said the daughter died of a ruptured spleen. In fact the child was suffering from a disease of the spleen which meant it was four to five times. the normal size and softer than average. It was unlikely that had the spleen been normal the blows or smacks would have ruptured it. A post-mortem examination showed there was extensive bruising on the back suggestive of having been caused by hitting with the open hand. Mrs Hewins had told police: “I smacked her 10 times on the buttocks. She was being very silly and not knowing the difference between 50 and 00. 1 smacked her and said ‘50414243,* and so on and asked her how many smarts she had had. She went all Soppy.” Mr Leary said that Mrs Hewins was originally charged with murder, but tt was later reduced to manslaughter. A pathologist. Dr. Peter Crowder, questioned by the defence counsel, agreed that Mrs Hewins had given her daughter “an ordinary reasonable spanking with the open hand.”