REGINA — An expert in child abuse and maltreatment says she never saw anything like the wounds she saw on a four-year-old Saskatchewan girl.
Caregivers Kevin and Tammy Goforth face charges of second-degree murder of the four-year-old girl and assault causing bodily harm to her two-year-old sister.
Dr. Sharon Leibel, who is with the child abuse unit at Regina Qu'Appelle Health Region, was called to General Hospital in August 2012 to document and report the injuries on two girls.
Leibel says there were bruises, skin abrasions, open skin and scrapes across the four-year-old's body.
The mother of the girls sobbed in court and left at one point as Leibel showed photographs of the wounds.
Leibel testified the four-year-old's legs were very skinny, "skin over bone" with bruising and that she had "never seen anything like it" about the girl's back.
She described the child's back as looking "like buckshot", with lots of dots of open skin all over and in concentrated areas.
The doctor also said there was a three by one centimetre bruise along the right wrist, front and back. She had ripped skin on her left wrist and similar bruising to the right wrist along with scarring.
Leibel did not say what caused the injuries, as well as when they occurred because "healing takes much longer in a sick or malnourished child."
An agreed statement of facts says the four-year-old girl died a few days after being brought to the hospital after suffering cardiac arrest.
Court has heard the Goforths fell under a specific class of caregiver that doesn't have legal status with the Saskatchewan government, and there were no required checks on the girls after they were placed in their care.
The Crown alleges that the girls were malnourished, kept in poor conditions and at times restrained.
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