Out Of Box Story: Gloria Dwomoh, A Ghanaian Nurse Jailed For 3 Years In UK For Force-Feeding Baby To Death

The nurse who force-fed  her baby to death was jailed yesterday for three years.

Gloria Dwomoh, said to be obsessed with the weight of ten-month-old daughter Diamond, used a small milk jug to tip baby rice, African corn porridge and chicken soup into her mouth.

The 31-year-old denied causing or allowing the baby’s death, insisting the method was ‘perfect’ and widely used in her home country, Ghana.

She admitted that Diamond often vomited after being fed, but said it did not worry her because her three other children had done the same.

She had been warned about the dangers of the practice more than two years before Diamond died in 2010 when she developed pneumonia after food got into her lungs.

In what was thought to be the first case of its type, Dwomoh, who worked at St Thomas’s Hospital in South London, was

unanimously convicted after a three-week trial at the Old Bailey last month. 

Her 37-year-old husband, who cannot be named, was cleared.

The Common Serjeant of London, Judge Brian Barker, said the case was ‘truly rare and truly tragic’. 

He told her: ‘You come from a background where the attempted feeding from a cup or a jug where a child is held may have been traditional.

‘But by the time of Diamond’s birth you must have known in this country, the feeding of young children in this way against her will was wrong and dangerous.

‘Social services has been involved with the family … and it appears you paid little attention to what they said.’

He added: ‘You are a trained nurse. You must have known the importance when feeding the recipient, whatever their age, should stay in control of their intake.

‘At best, it was a misguided obsession but it was a determined obsession and must have caused prolonged and daily distress to your daughter.’

The public gallery was packed with family and friends, and her barrister Trevor Burke told the court her husband had a petition with 1,000 signatures, saying she was a loving mother.

During her trial she told the jury: ‘I knew cup feeding was entirely perfect because I have seen it myself being used in Ghana with my own eyes. I would do nothing to harm her. I was scared.’

Source: DailyMail