Zurich Superior Court acquits father of charges of abusing his daughter
The Zurich Superior Court has acquitted a 30-year-old father of charges of abusing his daughter. The lower court had sentenced him to ten months' conditional imprisonment.
Acquittal on appeal: bone fracture in infant cannot be unambiguously attributed to abuse
The Zurich Superior Court acquitted a 30-year-old father on Friday of charges of abusing his young daughter, who was only a few weeks old, as reported by swissinfo.ch. When the judge announced the verdict, an audible expression of relief was heard from the defendant's relatives.
The Superior Court thereby overturned the verdict of the Bülach District Court. The lower court had found the man guilty and sentenced him to a conditional custodial sentence of ten months. The charge was that the father had used massive violence against the small child in June 2023 out of overwhelm, breaking her thighbone in the process.
At the appeal proceedings at the end of May, the father again denied the allegations. He insisted before the Superior Court that he had never done anything to harm his daughter.
The judges ruled in his favour. The expert reports drawn up had been unable to confirm that the man had used violence against his daughter. They had frequently merely referred to "probable alternative scenarios", with certain questions remaining unresolved.
Specifically, it was unclear whether abuse was even possible, given that neither upon the child's admission to hospital nor upon her discharge were haematomas found on the broken leg. The thighbone injury therefore could not be unambiguously attributed to abuse, the Superior Court reasoned in its decision.
Furthermore, it could not be ruled out that the child had suffered the bone fracture as a result of a confirmed genetic mutation. The father's perpetration was also not conclusively established: the girl had been in the care of several persons during the alleged time of the incident, so the involvement of a third party could not be ruled out.
The court awarded the man damages and compensation for 39 days of pre-trial detention. The verdict is not yet final and can be appealed to the Federal Court.
Source: Google News CH — Crime (de)