Kathleen Rebecca Antishar Harris

The Queen vs Tracee Leighann Harris: You met Blair Murray Antony Williams by way of a telephone chat line when Kathleen was five months old and he moved in with you one month later, in September 2004. Kathleen was your child from a previous relationship. The abuse of her appears to have begun early after you and Blair Williams began cohabiting. This pattern of appallingly abusive behaviour, which you apparently took no steps to intervene in, although you observed it and were aware of it over a period of some weeks, took the form of Blair Williams screaming abuse at baby Kathleen; holding her mouth closed to force her to drink; throwing her onto the ground, into her bouncer, and into her cot (causing extensive bruising and injury to her head as she often hit the ground head-first); crushing her in his arms; holding her underwater then pulling her out by her head; punching her about the face; putting his finger down her throat; and pressing his thumbs into her eyes. You observed fresh bruises on Kathleen’s head and body every morning. Despite this, you did nothing. You did not attempt to stop Williams or to protect Kathleen, and you did not seek any further help from a doctor, Plunket or the police, or from your family. In the last three days of your baby’s life, the assaults became even more serious and frequent. Kathleen cried continuously because she was so distressed, she was covered in bruises, and her breathing became very laboured. You knew that Kathleen’s chances of survival were severely compromised and in fact thought that she would probably soon die, yet still you failed to act. The manslaughter charge against you relates to these last few of days, whereas the cruelty charge relates to the preceding three weeks. Finally, on 27 November 2004, whilst you and Blair Williams were travelling by car from Upper Hutt to Levin, you both realised that Kathleen had stopped breathing. She was pronounced dead by the doctor at the Otaki Medical Centre. The horrific injuries that Kathleen had suffered over that eight week period were revealed during the post-mortem examination of her body. The pathologist discovered that Kathleen had a fractured skull and a displaced fracture to her left upper arm, along with extensive bruising primarily on the cranio-facial region, trunk and upper arms. She had a large subgaleal haemorrhage between her skull and scalp and contusions to her brain. She also had contusions to her liver, spleen and bowel, and bilateral symmetrical haemorrhages to her diaphragm. In the view of the pathologist, the cranio-facial bruising and skull fracture indicated blunt impact, and the abdominal injuries suggested a symmetrical compressive action on either side of the trunk. The fractured shaft of the left humerus was associated with remarkably little haemorrhage for such a large injury, suggesting that the child may have been in a collapsed state at the time of that injury with little or no effective cardiac output such as may have been expected shortly before death. Death was due to a multiplicity of injuries and could not be traced by the pathologist to one injury. Source: https://offenders.sst.org.nz/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Tracee-Leig...

Blair Williams was sentenced to a minimum 17-year jail term for the killing of seven-month old Kathleen Harris, whose already dead, badly bruised body was taken to an Otaki medical centre on November 27. Kathleen’s mother Tracee Harris is serving a seven-year jail term for manslaughter, on the basis that she had failed to get medical care for her battered daughter. Kathleen's skull was fractured, and she had two broken arms and internal injuries. She had landed so heavily on a textured fabric that it was imprinted on her forehead. Source: 4theKids.

See also: https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/73755086/fathers-pleas-for-h...