Toddler suffered 21 broken bones before death
Supplied- Warning: This story contains distressing details
A toddler who suffered 21 broken bones before her death had been sexually assaulted and murdered by her mother and her new boyfriend, a court has heard.
Two-year-old Isabelle Welsh collapsed at home in Thornaby, near Middlesbrough, having suffered a "massive head injury" in September last year. She died in hospital the following day.
At Teesside Crown Court, prosecutor Richard Wright KC said: "For weeks this child had been violently assaulted and her death by that terrible head injury was simply the end point in that campaign of violence."
Her mother Alexandra Walker, 25, and her partner Harrison Simpson, 22, deny murder, allowing the death of a child, sexual assault and child cruelty.
On 13 September, Walker made a 999 call about her daughter and paramedics found Isabelle collapsed at the foot of the stairs without a pulse.
Wright said she was covered in bruises and was rushed to hospital where, despite the efforts of specialist doctors, she died in the early hours of the next day.
The prosecution said Isabelle had been violently shaken, her spine over-extended and her head hit against a hard surface such as a wall or the floor.
'Aware of abuse'
Walker and Simpson got together last summer and he became a regular visitor to Walker's home, spending "a lot of time" with the little girl, jurors were told.
The prosecution said both Walker and Simpson had "ample opportunity" to harm the toddler and, in such a small two-bedroom house, "each must have been aware of the abuse".
Wright said Walker took her daughter to hospital 11 days before she died when Isabelle's leg was found to be fractured.
Despite the concerns of some medics, the court was told, she was discharged back into her mother's care.
The prosecutor said the leg fracture was "no more of an accident than the fatal head injury" and Walker, by her own account, had waited two weeks before reporting the fractured leg.
Wright said: "Even on the day she died, after her heart had stopped and she appeared to all intents and purposes to be dead, Alexandra Walker only called an ambulance when her stepfather told her to".
He called it "an act of self-preservation" because the couple "knew the questions that would come".
A post-mortem examination found that Isabelle had suffered fractures to 21 bones and she was "covered in bruising, the result of forceful gripping", Wright said.
The prosecutor said the pair had an "unhealthy" relationship which involved alcohol and drugs.
Wright read messages between Walker and her mother which discussed the defendant apparently calling Simpson a "paedo".
The court heard Walker also told her mother Simpson preferred to see her with Isabelle rather than alone, describing it as "weird", and discussed how he had bathed the child by himself.
Wright also said Walker had searched the sex offenders register in Middlesbrough in August last year.
Walker's mother was heard on CCTV footage taken from the home, days after the child was admitted to hospital, saying to Walker: "She looks like she is being abused."
However, Walker told her to "chill out".
The trial continues.
