A NURSERY manager has been found guilty of murdering a baby by strapping her to a beanbag face down for almost two hours.
Genevieve Meehan was found unresponsive and blue at Tiny Toes Nursery in Cheadle Hulme, Stockport, after her cries were “simply ignored”.
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Kate Roughley killed a little girl while working as a daycare manager Credit: Facebook
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Genevieve Meehan was found unresponsive and blue at Tiny Toes Nursery in Cheadle Hulme
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Baby’s mom said: ‘Gigi wasn’t just a baby’
The nine-month-old was rushed to hospital, but could not be saved and died later that day.
Kate Roughley, 37, was sentenced today after a jury of six men and six women unanimously found her guilty of manslaughter at Manchester Crown Court.
Disgustingly, the registered nurse “for some inexplicable reason seemed to be against Genevieve” in the days before the baby’s death.
She was heard telling the child to “stop whining” and kept telling her to “go home” when she cried.
Prosecutor Peter Wright KC said: “Her hostility towards Genevieve was, we say, as illogical as it was disturbing.”
The court was told the baby was strapped in at the front “by means of a belt” on a beanbag, not a cot or sleeping mat.
Then she was “practically” covered from head to toe with a blanket, which would increase the risk of overheating.
Wright said her sleeping position was an “obvious recipe for disaster” after she was unable to breathe properly.
He added: “Unsurprisingly, Genevieve was distressed by this treatment but her cries were ignored and she was left tightly swaddled, restrained and covered in this position.”
Genevieve remained almost motionless and face down between 13:35 and 15:12.
During this time, CCTV showed Roughley going on a toilet break as he told a colleague: “Just ignore anybody if they start.”
Five minutes later, Genevieve moved her head from side to side and raised her legs in a manner “completely consistent with an increasingly exhausted child struggling desperately to survive.”
Tragically, jurors heard that Roughley was checking on the other children but not the baby, who “remained seemingly motionless on the sack”.
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Registered nurse denies manslaughter and alternative count of child cruelty Credit: STEVE ALLEN
Her mum Katie Wheeler made the shocking revelation about Genevieve’s final hours before her parents dropped her off at nursery.
She said: “I put sunscreen on her, which she thought was tricky and funny.
“When I left her [at nursery] I told her ‘I love you baby’.
“[Genevieve’s dad] John told me he watched her come in and she seemed happy, and then I went home and went to work.”
While John told the court he later received a phone call from his wife saying their daughter was not answering.
He was then told that the baby had been taken to the emergency room at Stepping Hill Hospital.
When he arrived, John could see medics struggling to save the stricken young man.
Genevieve’s mum pays her respects in court
In a moving statement, the mum said: “I want to make this statement to speak and pay tribute to my beautiful daughter Genevieve. Gigi was not just a baby, she was a person with her likes and dislikes, her loves and her frustrations. She was complete person.
“Thanks to her beautiful French name, she adopted a French look in our house and I often gave her a French-accented voice. We used to joke that it would be very strange if she started speaking properly and didn’t actually speak French.
“She spent a lot of time playing on her play mat and was able to support herself while standing and also moved around the floor with great determination and speed, babbling how she loved it and saying ‘dada dada’.”
The dad added: “I stayed at the hospital while the doctors tried to save her. I saw Katie and her mother coming out of the room. The doctors and nurses came up to me and asked if I wanted to go with them.
“I wanted to stay with Genevieve. I overheard the doctors talking about stopping CPR. That’s when we were told they were going to stop the treatment and they couldn’t save Genevieve.”
Roughley is a qualified nursery nurse and early years practitioner with 17 years’ experience.
At the time of Genevieve’s death, she was the duty manager of the baby room and in charge of the sleep schedule.
She denied manslaughter and the alternative count of cruelty to a child.
Roughley will be sentenced on Wednesday.
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Roughley was ‘hostile’ to totCredit: Facebook
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The horror unfolded at Tiny Toes Nursery in Cheadle Hulme Credit: MEN Media
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