Child abuser trapped by technology

Strange marks on a toddler remained unexplained, until a webcam saw it all


Receiving mail.' The laptop monitor flashes. It's taking a long time to download the message. "That must be the one," I mutter to myself. After about 10 minutes, I get the message: Three new messages in your inbox.

I look at the name of the sender. It's the one I am expecting. I open the first message. There are three video attachments. I click on the first attachment. A short video clip plays on my monitor, sending a cold shiver down my spine. My worst fears have been confirmed. A diagnosis has been reached in a baffling case.

A strange case

I won't forget those moments when I went through those video attachments. The sender was the father of one of my patients.

The patient — a cute toddler who was not yet two years old. As her paediatrician, I had been seeing her since she was a six-month-old baby. A healthy baby who mostly came to me for vaccination visits.

The parents were easy going and friendly — ones with whom you could easily lapse into chatter about life in general within no time.

Their smiling faces had become clouded with worry over last two months. Over that period, their visits had become alarmingly frequent to the clinic. The reason — strange skin marks kept appearing and disappearing on baby's body.

The baby's cherubic face was looking strangely puffy. Dark circles were showing up below her eyes. The ears were swollen. There were some scratch marks on chest and fingers.

The pattern of the skin rash wasn't fitting into any particular allergy or infection. It was like a congregation of small superficial bruises.

Sometimes they would be on face, sometimes on thighs, sometimes on arms, sometimes on buttocks and sometimes on abdomen.

One spot would clear and other would appear at another site. This cycle was going on and on, in spite of the medicines.

Laboratory tests had revealed no particular abnormality. I was getting worried too. Was it a hidden malignancy or some rare skin disease?

Unearthing facts

I kept going through reference books and Internet sites to find a clue. After every visit of theirs, I would go home and discuss the findings with my wife, who happens to be a dermatologist. But despite all these efforts, the diagnosis was eluding me. Except one dark possibility — child abuse.

If someone at home was physically hurting the baby in some way, then these strange findings could be explained.

Knowing the parents as well as I did, I would have put my last penny on them if someone had blamed them for these happenings. But both of them were working in offices and the baby was being looked after by a maid.

By their second or third visit, I had asked the parents about the possible beatings by the housemaid but both vouched for her sincerity and efficiency. The only thing they noticed was the moment one of the parents arrived home, the baby would come and cling to them and would refuse to go to her. There wasn't much to read into that observation. Or was there?

I got the child X-rayed to see if I could get any evidence of a bone injury — a common finding in cases of severe physical abuse. All X-rays turned out normal ruling out the confirmation of my suspicion.

It was decided that we should try and do some surveillance on the housemaid's activities. But it was to be done only after informing her that her activities in their absence were going to be monitored.

There was a webcam attached to the computer kept in their hall and that could capture short video clips at regular intervals.

Caught in the act

Two weeks of surveillance bore no fruit or so they thought. There were many clips on the computer but none showing anything suspicious on initial screening.

Just before deleting them all, the father decided to go through each clip thoroughly, and there it was.

The evidence was staring him in his face. A hideous, horrific slide show of torture and torment inflicted by a treacherous and vicious adult upon a helpless, defenseless child, revealed by the gadget used by most for sending fun photos and doing live chatting.

The grainy images captured by webcam showed the housemaid handling the child as if she was a rag doll — rubbing the child's face with a towel so hard her entire body jerked backwards, pulling her hair tightly, pushing the feeding spoon down her throat, repeatedly hitting her face with a plastic toy.

It was a graphic tale of a savage human being who was entrusted with care of an innocent baby and who had instead chosen to harm and hurt her without any pangs her of conscience.

Once in a while she took care to hide her actions by turning her back to the camera but seeing the number of the clips where she was caught off guard, it was obvious her cruelty had often got better of her cunning.

Only the fact that the child was too young to articulate well had aided the servant earlier.

Now everything was clear. The puffiness of the face and black eyes of the baby were a result of repeated facial blows and pushes. The ear swellings were because of pulling and twisting. The scratch marks were made by the servant's nails.

Happy ending

The maid was sacked immediately and her relatives were instructed to repatriate her to her country.

The decision wasn't accepted without a fight but they had no choice after the parents showed them the evidence — her black deeds captured by webcam.

It was a story that ended on a happy note, in the sense that it did not leave anything more sinister in its wake. Just imagine how many more such stories must be lying untold and worse still unearthed.

The physical bruises of the child have healed long since. About the bruises on her little mind, we can only pray they will heal soon. Broken trust of humanity and kindness is hard to mend.