Mother staged videos to hide her 5-year-old’s injuries

O’Brien was charged with risk of injury to a minor and intentional cruelty to persons.

But police said O’Brien staged them.

O’Brien’s public defender was not immediately available for comment.

A doctor at the hospital watched the videos on O’Brien’s cellphone – showing the girl tapping her head to a bunk bed ladder – and told police that the footage looked fake, according to the warrant cited by the Hartford Courant.

Police were not able to pursue the case because of the conflicting expert assessments.

The girl had a “very large and swollen bruise causing her eyes to swell shut”, which the warrant said would have been caused by hair-pulling or severe force.

Doctor also did not believe the explanation of the girl harming herself, but no actions were taken against her mother because a forensic interviewer did, according to police. After she was arrested, O’Brien told the police, as well as the Department of Children and Families, that the young girl was hearing voices in her head.

The warrant states the juvenile was admitted at the Middlesex Hospital emergency room with bruising on the head and body. She was moved to Connecticut Children’s Medical Center in Hartford due to the severity of the injuries. Livingston told police they appeared staged.

In one, the girl had bruises to her face that were more severe than what would occur from tapping her head against the ladder, the warrant said.

In both videos, the girl tapped her head against the ladder.

According to the Middletown Press, O’Brien allegedly made a 5-year-old hit her head against a wall over and over. They took O’Brien’s cell phone as evidence and found additional videos on it. Police said the videos appeared to be “practice” videos and that O’Brien could be heard in the videos ordering her stepdaughter to hit her head on the ladder, according to court documents.

The arrest warrant said that one of the videos heard O’Brien telling her daughter to begin, and in another she says ‘What are you…’ before forgetting her line and eventually saying ‘doing?’ But the girl and her stepmother claimed she did it to herself, beating her head against a bunk bed ladder.

Police learned how the girl may have been injured.

It had been covered by two towels hanging from the towel rack.