Delco man charged with assaulting infant children
The children were 6 weeks and 10 months old at the time of the alleged abuse, authorities said.
A 28-year-old Delaware County man has been arrested and charged with aggravated assault and related offenses for allegedly abusing his girlfriend’s two infant children, one of whom is his own child, authorities said.
The Garnet Valley man was arrested Monday. Authorities say he fractured the bones of his and his girlfriend’s then-6-week-old daughter earlier this month and that he had injured his girlfriend’s then-10-month-old son in October, when the boy was under his care.
The Inquirer is withholding the man’s identity to protect his children’s privacy.
“The injuries suffered by these babies … are horrible,” Delaware County District Attorney Jack Stollsteimer said in a statement announcing the arrest. “Infants can’t defend themselves."
The injuries suffered by the older child had been the subject of a separate investigation that began in October, the District Attorney’s Office said. The child has since been placed in foster care. According to a criminal complaint, the boy had human bite marks on an arm and leg and bruising around his right eye, forehead, scalp, and back, among other injuries.
The boy’s mother told investigators that at the time, she was living with her boyfriend at his mother’s Garnet Valley home and that she had left her son in his care. The boyfriend contended that the baby fell in the bathtub, but authorities later determined that the child’s injuries were caused by physical abuse, the complaint says.
Separately, on April 14, authorities began to suspect that the 6-week-old daughter of the man and his girlfriend had been abused after the couple brought the baby to Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children in Wilmington, authorities said. The baby’s mother told detectives that the father had been taking care of the child. Doctors found various injuries to the baby, including rib fractures, according to a criminal complaint.
The child’s father told detectives at the hospital that he never hurt his child, the complaint says. He is in custody at the George W. Hill Correctional Facility on $50,000 bail. It was unclear if he had an attorney.
This child is now also under the care of the county’s Office of Children and Youth Services, Margie McAboy, a spokesperson for the District Attorney’s Office, said Wednesday.
Asked why the man wasn’t arrested soon after the first suspected case of child abuse, McAboy said that “prosecutors did not believe that sufficient evidence had been established to bring charges against the defendant at that time. However, during the investigation of the second incident, it became clear to prosecutors that there was sufficient evidence to conclude that the defendant had abused both children.”