A woman from Ternopil region has been sentenced to 7.5 years in prison for gouging out her 3-year-old son's eye for social benefits, the Prosecutor General's Office reported, writes UNN.
Details
The tragedy occurred in one of the hospitals in November 2019. The mother insisted that the boy had an infectious disease, although doctors did not confirm it.
"The woman was unemployed and was counting on social benefits, so she demanded that the child be "diagnosed" with a disease. Left alone with her son, she deliberately damaged his eyeball with a medical needle. Due to the severe injury, the three-year-old boy lost sight in one eye," the prosecutor's office reported.
As stated, he is currently under the care of another family.
"Prosecutors proved in courts of all instances the guilt of a resident of Ternopil region in inflicting intentional grievous bodily harm on her minor son. The court sentenced her to 7 years and 6 months of imprisonment for a crime committed with particular cruelty, which led to the child's loss of an eye and permanent disability," the report says.
In addition to the actual prison term, the court, as noted, ordered the convicted person to pay for treatment and 600,000 hryvnias in moral damages to the child.
As Deputy Prosecutor General Viktor Logachov noted:
This is about a severe tragedy of a child who lost his health due to the intentional actions of the closest person - his own mother. This boy will have to live with the consequences of this injury all his life. That is why the principled position of the prosecution was to ensure a fair punishment that corresponds to the gravity of the committed crime and confirms the inevitability of responsibility for encroaching on the life and health of children.