Sapphire Jatinder Kaur

Nine-month-old Sapphire Kaur was killed by the woman who was supposed to care for her, shaken so severely that she suffered fatal brain injuries on January 2, 1997. Patricia Cashmore was found guilty of manslaughter after a trial in which medical evidence was presented to show Sapphire had suffered brain injuries due to severe shaking. Cashmore, who had three children of her own, had started to care for Sapphire at Cashmore's own home on Karamu Road, Hastings, in late 1996. Cashmore, then 31, denied killing the baby and told police that she had shaken Sapphire in a moment of desperation, three days before her death. But medical evidence showed the injuries had most likely occurred between three and 16 hours before Sapphire's death. Evidence showed that while Sapphire was well-nourished and satisfactorily cared for, Cashmore was under pressure, could not cope, and wanted to be relieved of the extra pressure of caring for Sapphire as well as her own children. A jury in the High Court at Napier found Cashmore guilty of manslaughter, and in May 1998, she was sentenced to a year in jail. At sentencing, her lawyer Tony Snell said there was a history of violence in Cashmore's relationship with her partner and she had suffered a depressive illness under the demands of her children and "the incessant crying of Sapphire". Justice Andrew McGechan and the Crown prosecutor Graham Lang agreed the circumstances were not as bad as some child abuse cases, and McGechan said a lengthy sentence was not appropriate where there had been a isolated loss of self-control amid the background of Cashmore's depressive illness. After the sentencing, Sapphire's father, Jaswinder Singh, said he was shocked and extremely disappointed. "I wanted her to go to prison for life for what she did to my baby. Everybody was thinking she would get seven years, maybe life," he said. Source: https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/faces-of-innocents/79787370/faces-...