Mother who beat son because ‘Bible advised it’ jailed for life for his murder

A mother who shook her three-year-old son to death after repeatedly beating him with a bamboo cane “because the Bible advised it” has been jailed for life.

Christina Robinson claimed during her trial that the scriptures told her “she should chastise her child” as it would “correct” his behaviour.

The 30-year-old was jailed for life at Newcastle Crown Court and ordered to serve a minimum term of 25 years for the murder of her son Dwelaniyah.

Robinson exposed him to cruelty and excruciating pain over several weeks before she finally shook him to death at the family home in Ushaw Moor, Durham, on November 5 2022.

During sentencing Mr Justice Garnham said that as Dwelaniyah’s mother, she was guilty of a gross abuse of trust.

In his closing speech, Richard Wright KC, prosecuting, told the court the boy was “subjected to a campaign of violence and cruelty by his mother for petty wrongs”.

The trial heard harrowing details of her campaign of abuse, including one occasion when Robinson deliberately immersed her son in scalding water.

After Dwelaniyah soiled himself, Robinson dropped him into boiling liquid, causing burns to his lower limbs which affected 20 per cent of his body.

She did not seek medical help as safeguarding concerns would have been obvious if a health worker saw him.

Despite the excruciating pain her son must still have been in, Robinson caused further injury by beating him with a cane in the days that followed.

Robinson, a member of the Black Hebrew Israelite religion, admitted hitting the boy with the bamboo cane but claimed she was following a Bible scripture which advised the use of the rod for the “correction” of children.

The abuse happened when the little boy’s father was several hundred miles away at an RAF base near Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, the court heard.

Mr Justice Garnham concluded: “These beatings were all administered as punishments for behaviour that was objectively trivial but which you considered worthy of severe punishment.

“What must have gone through the mind of this little boy, being beaten with a cane by his mother, despite these terrible burns, does not bear thinking about.”

A post-mortem examination found he died from a head injury that could only have been caused by shaking or being thrown against something.

It showed the youngster had been the victim of a series of assaults and had sustained a number of non-accidental injuries.

Mr Justice Garnham accepted, however, that when Robinson shook Dwelaniyah to death, causing fatal brain injuries, she did not intend to kill him.

He also rejected claims that she was motivated by sadism, saying there was no evidence she took pleasure from inflicting pain.

But he said her mistreatment of Dwelaniyah in the last weeks of her son’s life was “appalling in the highest degree”.

Robinson represented herself and continued to deny she killed her son, saying: “I pray for the day when justice will be served.”

Outside court, Det Chief Insp Simon Turner said: “Dwelaniyah was a defenceless little boy who had his life ahead of him, but this was cruelly taken away by his own mother - someone he should have been able to trust, someone who should have cared about him.

“We may never know why or what caused Christina Robinson to do what she did.

“Her actions are unforgivable and sadly nothing will bring Dwelaniyah back but at least she is now facing the consequences of what she has done.”

Robinson, originally from Tamworth, Staffordshire, was convicted of murder and four child cruelty charges following a three-week trial in March.

She was also convicted of child neglect by leaving Dwelaniyah at home while she had an affair behind her husband’s back.