Mother who shook toddler to death is jailed for murder

A mother who beat her three-year-old son with a bamboo cane and immersed him in scalding water before shaking him to death has been jailed for his murder.

- TARA COBHAM

Christina Robinson, 30, exposed her son Dwelaniyah to a "campaign of violence and cruelty" and excruciating pain over several weeks before she shook him to death at the family home in Ushaw Moor, Durham, in November 2022.

A trial at Newcastle Crown Court heard Robinson, a member of the Black Hebrew Israelite religion, admitted hitting the little boy with a bamboo cane but claimed she was following a Bible scripture, which advised the use of the rod for the "correction" of children.

After deliberately immersing him in scalding water, causing severe burns that left him in agony, Robinson did not seek medical help as safeguarding concerns would have been obvious if a health worker saw him.

After the toddler's violent death at the hands of his mother, investigators found a broken cane in her house which had traces of Dwelaniyah's skin and blood on it. Forensic scientists also detected blood stains on his teddy bear as well as in different rooms in the family home.

Robinson, originally from Tamworth in Staffordshire, was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 25 years yesterday, after she was convicted of murder and four child cruelty charges at the same court in March. She was also convicted of child neglect after repeatedly leaving her children at home alone as she conducted an affair while her husband was several hundred miles away serving at an RAF base near Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire.