Prague, March 22 (CTK) – Dieu Vu Thi, who worked as a nanny of children of her Vietnamese expatriates in Prague, is to go to prison for 11 years for heavily injuring two small girls one of whom died due to the injury, the Prague Municipal Court ruled on Wednesday.
The 32-year old Dieu Vu Thi pleads innocent and she appealed the verdict on the spot.
She was banned from nursing children for ten years and she must pay over four million crowns to the families of the girls and one million to a health insurance company. The verdict has not taken effect yet.
According to the prosecution, the nanny attacked two girls whom she took care of in 2015: in February she injured one in the head, in December she wounded the bowels of the other girl by hitting her stomach.
Though the experts addressed by the court confirmed that the girls must have cried very much, the nanny did not report any injury to their parents. Due to this, the girls were treated in hospital belatedly. The first girl spent two months in hospital with a brain edema. Being four years old now, she neither talks nor walks and she suffers from epilepsy, her representative said. The other girl died despite doctors’ effort.
In November 2015, a third girl broke her arm during the time when the woman was her babysitter. Since it is unclear whether the injury of the baby girl was caused by the woman or by her small son, the court said the nanny was guilty of bodily harm due to neglect in this case.
The court experts did not reveal any motive for the crime and they confirmed the woman’s mental health.
The woman pleads not guilty. She claims that she cared for the children much better than their own parents. She said the parents brought the children to her to look after very frequently and left them in her care for many hours.
The woman was on maternity leave and did not tax the incomes she received for looking after the children, which is against law.
The woman faced up to 16 years in prison. The court decided to impose a lower punishment on her because she has no crime history.
