Horrific new details of dad’s ‘torture murder’ of girl, 2
The gruesome details of how a toddler was allegedly tortured and killed by her de facto father have been revealed in court. Warning: Graphic
WARNING: Graphic content
The mother of a two-year-old girl allegedly tortured and murdered by her de facto father has given a graphic and horrifying account of how her daughter died.
The scene of the toddler’s death in a western Sydney granny flat included the de facto father allegedly vigorously shaking the child until the toddler went limp, turned “brownish purple”, vomited “black liquid” and stopped breathing.
This was after Mohammed Khazma had allegedly barricaded the mother into the flat and then said, “you know babe, I have a feeling someone’s going to died today”.
After the toddler stopped breathing, the woman said Mr Khazma told her, “don’t drop my name. I’m not going to jail for a little slut of a mother”.
The mother, 24, was testifying against her former de facto at Mr Khazma’s trial for the alleged murder and assault causing actual bodily harm of the toddler.
The little girl died on December 19, 2016, after about a week in which she had been allegedly burnt on her genitals with “smiley” burns inflicted by a cigarette lighter, punched, thrown across the room and against a wall and bitten over her body.
On that day, the mother told the court she had woken up in the couple’s West Guildford lounge room and heard Mr Khan slap the back of her daughter’s neck and the child fall to the floor.
She said Mr Khan then said, “no (the child’s name), not again, not again”.
The child was rendered unconscious, the woman said, as she had been three times previously in the same week.
On each of those alleged occasions, the child had always woken up, but on the last had been “drowsy” and “staring into space ... brain damaged”.
The woman said when her daughter lost consciousness for the final time, Mr Khazma started biting the child’s fingers, toes and tongue in an effort to wake her up, and refused suggestions to take her to hospital.
“He said, ‘no, we’ll fix her’,” the child’s mother told the court.
“He barricaded the door, he had the couch against it.
“He took my phones off me. I asked ‘why did you hit her?’
“He said, ‘it’s just a tap, I barely touched her’.
“I said, ‘you’re going to end up killing her one day’.”
It was then Mr Khazma allegedly replied he had a “feeling someone’s going to die today”.
The woman said her daughter’s breathing had slowed and become shallow, and Mr Khan bit the child’s tongue and held his palm over the child’s mouth and squeezed her nose between his fingers.
“She went a bit stiff,” said the mother, who was giving evidence via video link from a room outside the court chamber.
“He grabbed her shoulders and started to shake her. Her feet weren’t touching the ground.
“He shook her back and forward fast. Her head was hitting almost at the back of her head.”
The child’s head went “as far back as it could go” and when it swung forward the little girl’s chin was “touching her chest”.
After several seconds of shaking, the child went limp.
The mother of the child, who has already served prison time for her daughter’s manslaughter, gave graphic details of the alleged abuse in the week before the child’s death on December 20 2016.
As the woman gave evidence about the alleged abuse, Mr Khazma, his hair tied up in a topknot, bowed his head as he sat in the dock of the court.
The alleged abuse began after the 24-year-old woman and Mr Khazma moved into together after knowing each other for just weeks, and planning to marry.
The woman told the court Mr Khazma had threatened to kill her and her family and had become angry at the child after she broke a mug at his parents’ house and refused to eat a meal.
“I wasn’t allowed to go near her,” she said. “Mohammed (said), ‘She sleeps when I say she sleeps. She wakes up when I say she wakes up.’”
The woman said the abuse began when the couple returned to their new western Sydney granny flat after visiting his parents’ house where her daughter had broken the mug.
“He said, ‘She is a naughty girl.’ He wouldn’t let me comfort her,” the woman told the court.
“He slapped her in the face. She started screaming.
“He slapped her again in the face and bit the soles of her feet.”
The woman said this was after her daughter’s legs had turned purple when Mr Khazma forced her to stand in the corner for breaking the mug.
She told the court Mr Khazma planned to raise her daughter “into being a pit bull ... as in a tough child”.
Text messages read out in the court before Justice Elizabeth Fullerton detailed how the woman and Mr Khazma had planned an Islamic wedding after knowing each other for a short time.
He was happy to bring up her daughter and the woman complied.
ALLEGATIONS DENIED
Under cross-examination by Mr Khazma’s defence barrister, Luke Brasch, the woman repeatedly denied allegations she had swore at and physically struck her young daughter and the girl’s older brother.
“There was an occasion in the first few days of moving in together where you acted aggressively and violently towards your daughter?” Mr Brasch said.
“You slapped her across the face with you right hand? You said ‘f*** that little bitch, she’s doing my head in’?”
The woman said “no”, denying all three suggestions.
Mr Brasch suggested to the woman that on several separate occasions different people had seen or heard her strike or throw either child causing bruising or other injuries.
Mr Brasch said flatmates or visitors had seen her hit her son in the face, lock him in a room and scream “you’re a f***ing idiot”.
The woman replied, “no, no, no”.
Brasch: “He had large bruises all over his legs ... (and) one on his lower back?”
The mother: “No”.
The woman also denied Mr Brasch’s suggestion she told Mr Khazma’s mother she couldn’t take her daughter to hospital because of previous “issues with DOCS (the Department of Family and Community Services)”.
On another occasion when her son had a smelly nappy, Mr Brasch said, the woman had thrown him into a bedroom.
The woman said “no”.
Mr Brasch said the boy had then “screamed out in pain, you shouted at him, ‘I hope you get hit by a car. You are the biggest mistake of my f***ing life. I wish I never had you’.”
The woman denied she had hit her son, or screamed at him.
Mr Brasch: “On his head he had a massive egg, bruising ... he was crying, saying ‘aunty, mummy hurt me’?”
The woman: “No.”
Asked by Mr Brasch if on another occasion she had thrown an iPad at her daughter’s head, the woman replied, “no, my kids didn’t own iPads”.
She also denied she had thrown her daughter on to a change table or whacked her in the chest.
“No,” the woman said. “I didn’t own a change table.”
Asked if she had undergone a difficult and frustrating period and had lashed out at her children as a result, the woman said “yes, it was hard being a single mother”.
But she denied she had “ever used physical means to discipline (the children)”.
A text message the woman sent to Mr Khazma and read out in court said, “I’m so f***ing angry I’m trying hard not to go and smack her out”.
“I suggest to you that was (about your daughter),” Mr Brasch said.
“No,” the woman replied, “it was about my grandmother. It was just a figure of speech.”
Mr Brasch questioned why the woman hadn’t just left Mr Khazma when she had previously walked out of a violent relationship.
“The reason you didn’t leave is you were the person who was violent towards [your daughter] not Mohammed?” Mr Brasch said.
“No,” the woman said.
The woman agreed with Brasch that she was giving evidence against Mr Khazma as a result of a reduced sentence deal after pleading guilty to her daughter’s manslaughter.
“You failed to remove (your daughter) from abuse, failed to get her medical attention, failed to protect her?”
The woman agreed.
Asked if she had received a sentence discount and had to assist the court by giving evidence or risk returning to prison, the woman agreed.
MOTHER PLEADED GUILTY TO HER DAUGHTER’S MANSLAUGTER
In one text, the woman wrote to Mr Khazma, “(Girl’s name) is your little girl and what happens between you and her is not my business.’
The woman also texted to Mr Khazma, “You are the man of the house, your word goes. I have no right to interfere with anything.”
She said Mr Khazma had been “respectful” of her daughter but when they moved in together that allegedly changed and he became violent towards her.
“I was scared of him,” she said under questioning fro Crown Prosecutor Philip Hogan.
“He said he would kill me, he would kill my son and his father and would go to my mother’s house and kill her too.
“He made threats of having a gun and going to get it and killing us all.”
The mother, who served a minimum 16 months after pleading guilty in 2017 to her daughter’s manslaughter, is now on parole.
ACCUSED ALLEGEDLY THREATENED TO KILL MOTHER
She told the court that after she objected to Mr Khazma’s alleged suggestion she put makeup to cover up the bruises on her daughter’s face, “he kicked me straight in the face”.
She said Mr Khazma assaulted her daughter “almost every day towards the end”.
He said during that period, Mr Khazma held her daughter up by the throat with her feet off the ground.
On another occasion she heard a bang while he was in the shower with the door locked.
Afterwards, she said she saw her daughter crying and “her legs were shaking”.
The woman said Mr Khazma then called her “a sl*t for thinking of what my dad did to me”.
She had earlier testified that Mr Khazma’a alleged actions towards her daughter reminded her of her own father.
In another alleged incident, Mr Khazma punched the child in the face and then made the child have a shower afterwards, when the toddler was crying and saying, “Daddy ouch”.
The woman claimed Mr Khazma refused to let her take her daughter to the doctor for her injuries.
The trial before Justice Fullerton continues.