Man tried to drown newborn baby in bowl of water

Warning: This article contains distressing details that some readers may find disturbing

A man tried to drown a newborn baby in a bowl of nappy-changing water.

Jay Dixon, now 23, was 20 when he assaulted the boy, who was just a few days old.

A court heard the baby’s mother had fallen asleep after putting the infant in his Moses basket while Dixon watched TV in the same room in a home in Dundee.

She woke to hear the baby “screaming” with Dixon holding him at arm’s length in front of him.

The baby’s face and the top half of his baby grow were soaking.

There was talc on his face and his clothing.

Dixon said: “I put his head in the bowl of water and tried to drown him, but I stopped myself.”

When the baby’s mother said she was going to leave with the baby, Dixon began punching doors and walls, saying he’d kill her and the baby if she did.

Prosecutor Brian Bell told the High Court in Stirling: “He later apologised to her for what he’d done, but never explained why.”

The court heard that in several other “terrifying” incidents, Dixon tried to get the baby to stop crying by putting his hands on the infant’s chest as the child lay on a bed, pushing down with force so the baby could not get his cries out.

On another occasion, when the child was crying and Dixon could not calm him, he stood up and picked the baby up with his hands around his neck.

The court heard that Dixon restricted the baby’s breathing and shook him before throwing him onto a bed, screaming.

The baby was taken into care when he was less than a month old after a family nurse visited and found a “fist-sized bruise” on his right temple concealed under a wooly hat.

He was taken to Ninewells Hospital, Dundee where a paediatrician found “significant bruises” including on his forehead, cheek, scalp, chest wall, elbow and behind his right shoulder.

Dixon said he’d placed the baby in a washing basket on a table while the mother was asleep, and he’d fallen out of it onto the floor.

A medical report said Dixon’s behaviour had been life-threatening to the baby – the chest compressions could have damaged his fragile bones, organs and tissues; the forced shaking could have led to shaken baby syndrome; compressing the baby’s neck could have caused immediate respiratory arrest; and Dixon could have drowned the baby in only a few inches of water.

Dixon admitted to assaulting the baby to the danger of life. He had originally been accused of attempted murder, but the Crown accepted his guilty plea to the lesser charge. He also admitted to ill-treating the baby and exposing him to danger.

The incidents took place at addresses in Dundee from shortly after the baby’s birth in November 2023 to December 11, 2023, when the baby was taken into hospital.

The child was discharged into kinship care on December 13, 2023, and has not suffered any lasting ill effects.

Dixon further admitted a course of domestic abuse perpetrated towards a woman, then 18, at various locations in Dundee in 2021.

While on bail for that offending, he carried out another year-long campaign of abuse towards another woman, the baby’s mother.

He was arrested on March 16, 2023, after a drunken incident at a Travelodge in Perth when he attacked her.

Hotel staff came to see what was happening and the woman, by then six weeks pregnant, fled the room, before being punched in the face by Dixon as she sat in reception.

The High Court heard that after this he appeared on petition at Perth Sheriff Court, and was initially banned from having any contact with the woman.

However at three subsequent bail hearings, sheriffs relaxed his bail conditions, initially to allow him to attend medical scans for the unborn baby; then two moths later to allow him to attend the coming birth; and finally in October 2023 a special condition preventing him from entering the woman’s home was removed. He remained on standard conditions of bail.

In December 2023, he was remanded in custody at Dundee Sheriff Court over the assaults on the baby, and has been in custody since.

On Tuesday, Judge Jane Farquharson warned him he faced a jail sentence, plus an extended period of supervision on his eventual release.

Deferring sentence until May 30, at the High Court in Livingston, she warned: “These are extremely serious charges.”

Gillian Ross KC, defending, said Dixon was aware a prison sentence was “inevitable”.