A MOTHER facing neglect charges described the moment when she first learned her son had suffered injuries including 12 fractured ribs.

Charmain Rippon said she was devastated and felt sick when police told her after she had been arrested.

“I just couldn’t get my head around it,” she told Southampton Crown Court. “I was completely in shock. I was really upset.”

Rippon was asked by defence barrister Michael Vere-Hodge QC whether she had told police she would kill anyone who harmed her baby. “Yes,” she replied. “It was a true expression about how I felt about my son.”

Jurors have heard how the baby, now in foster care, was just five-and-a-half months old when he was detained in Southampton General Hospital in April 2008, emaciated, covered in bruises and suffering from multiple fractures to his lungs. He had also suffered bleeding behind the eyes and on the brain.

Rippon’s former partner Luke Lock stands accused of inflicting the injuries, while she is alleged to have covered up for him.

Rippon told the court how she was “excited” and Lock “ecstatic” when they learned they were going to be parents, and the baby initially had been good in his routine. “He was very content and would sleep through the night. He was very well.”

She described an incident when the baby rolled on the floor in their flat and tried to push himself up into a crawling position.

“Next thing all the muscles in his neck went limp and his head went straight down onto the floor. He had a red mark and then I noticed a bruise behind his ear.”

‘Freaking out’ She recalled how she once returned from a trip to a local shop. Lock was cradling him and his limbs were loose, his eyes shut and he looked as though he had passed out. “Luke was freaking out and told me, saying ‘take him, take him’. He told me he had been walking around with him and when he looked down he had gone limp. I accepted his explanation.”

After he was detained in hospital, she was allowed to spend the first night with him.

She said: “It was the first time I knew social services were involved and I would be watched all the time with my son. I felt like a criminal. I had no idea what was wrong with him except he had some fluid around the brain and some bruises.”

Rippon said she only realised the seriousness of his injuries after the boy had been taken into care, and did not know of Lock’s confession he had once pulled their baby tighter to him when he was holding him one night when he wouldn’t sleep until she heard it in court.

She was asked by Mr Vere-Hodge if she had wilfully neglected her son. “No, I believe I did everything I could do at the time. I knew Luke had an anger about him but I never witnessed anything to make me think it was Luke.”

Rippon, 23, of Wavell Road, Southampton, denies two charges of neglect. Lock, 21, of Albert Road South, denies one charge each of causing grievous bodily harm, occasioning actual bodily harm and child cruelty.

Proceeding