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A nursery worker has been found guilty of killing a nine-month-old baby girl who died after being strapped face down to a beanbag for more than 90 minutes.
Genevieve Meehan suffocated after being placed in “mortal danger” by Kate Roughley, the deputy manager of Tiny Toes nursery in Cheadle Hulme, Stockport, the trial heard.
Roughley, 37, was found guilty of the manslaughter of Genevieve after a four-week trial at Manchester crown court. She will be sentenced on Wednesday.
The court heard how Genevieve, known to her family as Gigi, was left for one hour and 37 minutes swaddled in a blanket and strapped face down to a beanbag in the baby room at Tiny Toes on 9 May 2022.
Genevieve’s mother, Katie Wheeler, held back tears in the public gallery as the jury foreperson said jurors had unanimously found Roughley guilty of manslaughter after five hours and 46 minutes of deliberations.
Roughley stared impassively from the court dock as the judge, Mrs Jusice Naomi Ellenbogen KC, said she would face a “lengthy custodial sentence” when she was sentenced.
Roughley, who had worked at the nursery for 17 years and ran the baby room, denied manslaughter and an alternative charge of child cruelty, insisting she did not cause the girl’s death.
The prosecutor Richard Wright KC told jurors that the defendant had placed the nine-month-old in “mortal danger” and then deliberately did nothing about it.
“Genevieve’s death was not the result of some unforeseen, unexpected, unexplained phenomenon as suggested by Kate Roughley but the result of asphyxiation brought about by a combination of pathophysiological stresses, each of them caused or brought about by her deliberate conduct,” Wright told the jury.
“Genevieve’s death was not a terrible and unavoidable accident. We say it was unquestionably terrible but it was wholly avoidable. As the evidence demonstrates in this case, it was the treatment meted out to Genevieve by Kate Roughley which was the direct cause of her death. Her death arose as a direct consequence of the unsafe sleeping environment, the unsafe sleeping arrangement to which she had been deliberately placed.”
The jury heard that Roughley repeatedly expressed frustration with Genevieve in the hours and days before her death. In CCTV footage, Roughley could be seen picking the little girl out of her cot and placing her impatiently on a play mat, muttering “vile” and “Twenty minutes. Twenty minutes.”
Within an hour, Roughley was seen clapping and singing “Oh Genevieve. Genevieve go home, Genevieve go home, go home Genevieve” as the child cried on a play mat.
Days earlier, Roughley had told her “stop your whingeing” and said: “Genevieve, if we had any chance of being friends, you just blew it,” later adding: “You are driving me bananas.”
Karen Tonge, a specialist prosecutor for the Crown Prosecution Service, said the CCTV footage from the nursery’s baby room showed “a complete lack of care and tenderness towards Genevieve, and a total disregard for her welfare”.
She added: “For some inexplicable reason, Kate Roughley had taken a dislike to Genevieve, and this was clear for all to hear and see.
“Kate Roughley was entrusted to take care of Genevieve. It is difficult to comprehend how someone in such a position of trust could have such a complete disregard for a child’s wellbeing and life. Her actions and inactions have had devastating consequences.”
