Ipswich man pleads guilty to assault after smacking infant, toddler with spoons

A Queensland man has faced assault charges after hitting his two young young children with spoons, leaving them with ‘significant’ bruising which was picked up by daycare staff.

An Ipswich dad-of-two has faced court after hitting his two young children, aged one and two years old, with spoons in a display of “excessive parental discipline” which left them with “significant” bruising.

The 26-year-old man, who cannot be named to protect the identities of his victims, appeared in Ipswich Magistrates Court on Tuesday June 14, where he pleaded guilty to three counts of assault occasioning bodily harm while armed.

The court heard all three offences happened at his family’s Ipswich home over two days-long periods in January and February this year. The man’s children were aged one and two at the time.

Magistrate Robert Walker said the man enforced “excessive parental discipline” when he used spoons to punish his children, leaving them with “confronting” and “significant” bruising.

The children’s injuries were discovered by workers at the childcare centre they attended.

The court heard the workers were told the children had caused the bruises themselves by hitting each other with a wooden spoon, but they photographed the bruises and alerted the relevant authorities all the same.

When investigators from the Child Investigation Unit spoke to the children’s mother, Mr Walker said she offered another “deflective” story about how they were in the care of others when they sustained the injuries.

While police were making inquiries, the mother indicated she had received a phone call from the father admitting the bruises were caused by him. Police later saw messages from the mother to the father, asking him to “stop flogging them”.

Officers subsequently questioned the dad who said he could only assume the bruises were the result of him spanking them with a spoon. He said the children were fighting, he told them to stop and they did not, so he hit them with a black plastic spoon.

He said he thought it was a reasonable punishment for a one- or two-year-old and he had been using the method, hitting them with two or three different cooking spoons, for a couple of months. Each spoon was seized.

Police prosecutor Sergeant Nick Turnbull said the man has a history of domestic violence-related offending and the community denunciated such offending.

“Children require protection of their father, not from their father,” Sgt Turnbull said.

Defence solicitor Andy Bazzi said his client was born and raised in Queensland by his stepmother. He was living with his partner and children before the offending and has been living with other family members since.

Mr Bazzi said the man realised he “screwed up” and that his actions went beyond what is acceptable. He said he wants to be a good parent to his children and missed them dearly since being separated from them after the offending.

Magistrate Robert Walker took a number of factors into account when deciding an appropriate penalty, including the man’s pleas of guilty, the young age of his children, and the fact he co-operated “extensively” with police.

He also noted that while he told police he had been punishing them with spoons for a couple of months, he had only been charged over the incidents which occurred in January and February.

“It may have been, in a bygone era, commonplace to discipline children by the use of violence,” Mr Walker said.

“It is utterly unacceptable. It was unacceptable then. It’s clearly, recognisably unacceptable now (and) warrants the strongest denunciation and penalties that reflect the abhorrence of the community at this sort of behaviour ...”

Mr Walker said the penalty should also act as a deterrent to other parents who might be minded to such “crude” behaviour.

The Ipswich man was sentenced to nine months’ imprisonment for each offence with immediate parole release.

Convictions were recorded for each offence.