Darwin mum, boyfriend plead guilty to neglecting two year old boy and trying to cover it up

In a text message the toddler’s mother sent to her boyfriend she said ‘I smack him my hand is so painful’, before sending him a video of the child ‘crying hysterically’.

The court heard the boy was left alone in a locked car for at least four hours.

A young Darwin couple who ”abandoned” a two-year-old boy for up to eight hours at a time without food or water and exposed him to “high-risk serious sexual offenders” have formally admitted to their crimes.

The boy’s mother and her boyfriend, who cannot be named to protect the identity of the child, each pleaded guilty in the Supreme Court to failing to provide the necessities of life and attempting to pervert the course of justice.

A statement of facts tendered to the court reveals the boy was repeatedly left alone and unattended while the couple were at work in 2021, including on one occasion when he was left in a locked car for at least four hours.

On November 3, the man took the boy with him to his job at a halfway house for serious sex offenders “who are considered high risk as they regularly exhibit sexualised and aggressive behaviours”.

He then left the child unattended in a locked room while he took the two sex offenders grocery shopping and to an appointment and only returned two hours later at about 8.30pm.

When he opened the door to the room he found the boy screaming after having strewn the man’s lunch all over the bed, to which he responded by taking photographs and then “simply locking the door”, while “the victim continued to scream”.

The man then texted the photos to the boy’s mother saying “See what your son done to my food, now I don’t have anything to eat”, to which she responded “Jesus, I’m sorry”.

“This boy I’m fed up of what he is doing for us now,” she wrote.

When the man came back into the room 45 minutes later he found the boy “still screaming and clutching his right thigh”.

Another hour later, the man made an excuse with his supervisors before again leaving him unattended in the car to hide him from them and eventually taking him to the hospital at about 11.20pm.

The child was admitted to hospital with a broken leg, bruising on his face and a previously untreated broken collarbone that had since healed over.

When doctors became suspicious, the pair conspired to cover up the neglect by repeatedly lying to hospital staff, police and child protection workers, with the mother at one point feigning a “fainting spell” to avoid questioning.

A subsequent search of her phone revealed text messages sent to the man in which she said “I smack him my hand is so painful”, before sending him a video of the child “crying hysterically”.

“I’m so angry with myself. I can’t control my anger. I was smacking sleeping (name redacted),” she wrote a month later.

“(He) is still awake. I smack him those canes. Still awake this boy. I don’t have patience to deal with him now. Sorry to disturb you.”

The couple will return to court in June.