This is the shocking moment a midwife was caught beating up a newborn baby because he kept crying and waking other tots. Emiliya Kovacheva was locked up for 18 years for the brutal attack on little Nikol Dimitrova, who has since been diagnosed with severe epilepsy.
CCTV taken at the hospital in the Bulgarian capital of Sofia shows four-day-old Nikol being punched and slapped by Kovacheva. Kovacheva’s lawyers argued during the case that the midwife was frustrated by Nikol crying and waking up other babies, as she was at the end of a 24-hour shift. The court rejected this excuse and she was sentenced to 18 years in prison at a hearing in September 2017. But the court later decided to change this to house arrest as Kovacheva herself is a mum-of-two and the sole carer of her elderly parents. Nikol’s parents have recently revealed that the now three-year-old has been diagnosed with serious epilepsy, a condition often caused by a head injury, especially at a young age. According to the family’s lawyer doctors had previously warned that some kind of condition could be expected because of the trauma she received at the hands of the midwife.
Forensic experts at the time established that the tiny baby had been beaten with fists and probably a bottle while her mother was recovering from the birth elsewhere in the hospital. The injuries she inflicted on her included a 12-inch blood clot and experts told the court that Nikol had suffered potentially life-threatening injuries and was lucky to have survived. The parents say they want nothing less than a life sentence for the midwife and have criticised the legal system for letting her off too easily. Kovacheva says she suffers from poor health and needs more freedom to move around, but a request for a further relaxation of her house arrest terms and conditions has so far been denied.
Photo Credit: Getty
