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A former NHS worker has been jailed for giving a young boy “industrial amounts” of laxatives, which caused his development and mobility to be affected.
Tracy Menhinick, from Aberdeen, poisoned the child while he was aged between three and six, and was admitted to hospital weighing just under 10kg when he was five years old.
The 52-year-old then consented to treatments, procedures and operations on him which she knew were unnecessary “all to his permanent disfigurement, permanent impairment and to the danger of his life”.
Following a trial at the High Court in Aberdeen, she was found guilty of “wilfully” ill-treating the child in a manner likely to cause him unnecessary suffering or injury to health on various occasions over the course of three years from 2014.
She has now been jailed for seven years when she appeared for sentencing at the High Court in Glasgow on Tuesday.
One expert witness told jurors that the child resembled a survivor from a concentration camp, and that he was taken to hospital in October 2016 following concerns for his weight loss and explosive diarrhoea.
Under observation by hospital staff, it was discovered that he would drastically deteriorate when under Menhinick’s care, and a test result from Great Ormond Street Hospital confirmed lactulose was present in his stool sample.
The ill-treatment happened on various occasions at an address in Aberdeen, at Royal Aberdeen Children’s Hospital and elsewhere.
The child cannot be named for legal reasons.
Frances Connor, representing Menhinick, said she has a “package of mental health problems” and a very complex psychiatric history.
More follows.
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