A BANGLADESHI woman who shook a baby boy so violently that he suffered brain damage walked free from court yesterday because a judge conceded that she did not know how to behave in the West.
Rahella Khanom, 24, caused the five-month-old boy in her care to suffer fractures to his breast bone and ribs as she tried to rid him of evil spirits, Southwark Crown Court was told.
The injuries inflicted on the child over several weeks had caused one side of his brain to shrink. It was believed that the boy would have been screaming in agony for eight weeks because his injuries went untreated.
Khanom, from Poplar, East London, said that she had wanted to purge the baby of evil spirits as it cried and cried. She was not found to be mentally ill.
The court was told that Khanom, a Muslim, did not understand that shaking a helpless baby would not exorcise an evil spirit.
Judge Rodney McKinnon told Khanom: “Normal and right-minded people will be horrified by this. Everybody must recognise how serious it is to treat children in this way and to use violence.” But the judge said that Khanom’s strong cultural and religious beliefs, and the fact that she had been forced by her husband to live in isolation since coming to Britain from Bangladesh, meant that there were exceptional circumstances in her case.
Words fail me.
Watch for a load of appeals from convicted "honor killers" who will claim their "cultural and religious beliefs" give them "exceptional circumstances".
Britain inches closer to becoming a Muslim state.
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