A mother and her boyfriend sexually assaulted and broke 21 bones in her two-year-old daughter’s body during a ‘campaign of violence’ which led to her death, a court heard today.

Isabelle Rose Welsh had been ‘violently assaulted’ for weeks in the run-up to her death in September last year and was killed by a final ‘massive head injury’ inflicted upon her, Teesside Crown Court was told.

Her mother, Alexandra Walker, 25, and her boyfriend, Harrison Simpson, 21, are on trial accused of the murder of Isabelle, causing or allowing the death of a child, assault by penetration of a child under 13 and child cruelty.

Opening the case today, prosecutor Richard Wright KC said that on Saturday September 13 last year a 999 call was made about a sick child and paramedics arrived at the property in Thornaby, Teesside, within one minute.

They found Isabelle on her back at the foot of the stairs covered in bruises with no pulse.

Mr Wright said: ‘Isabelle’s death was not the result of some form of naturally occurring illness.

‘She died because shortly before her terminal collapse somebody had inflicted a massive head injury upon her.

‘Her skull had been fractured, her brain had been injured, and her heart had stopped as a result of that assault upon her.’

The court heard Walker had only called an ambulance when her step-father told her to, even though Isabelle 'appeared to all intents and purposes to be dead.'  

He said she had been ‘violently shaken’, with her head ‘impacting a hard and unyielding surface such as a wall or hard floor.’

‘This was no accident,’ he said.

‘It was the deliberate infliction of injury on that little girl. It was, say the prosecution, murder.’

The court heard that 11 days before Isabelle died, Walker had taken her to the GP and then hospital because she was complaining of pain in her leg.

Walker was said to have waited two weeks before seeking medical attention.

The leg was found to be fractured but ‘despite the concerns of some of the medical staff, Isabelle was discharged back into the care of her mother, the account of an accidental injury seemingly having been accepted.’

Mr Wright said that the fracture was ‘no more of an accident than the fatal head injury that killed her.’

When her body was examined after she died, the court was told that specialists found she had sustained multiple fractures to 21 bones including her arms, legs and the vertebrae in her spine.

She also had bruising and injuries consistent with being sexually assaulted.

Mr Wright added: ‘For weeks this child had been violently assaulted and her death, by that terrible head injury, was simply the end point in that campaign of violence to which she had been subjected.’

He said both Walker and Simpson, who lived together at the small property ‘must have been aware of the abuse’ and only failed to report it ‘because each of them was responsible for inflicting it’.

'Their failure to summon help from doctors and finally the emergency services, was an act of self-preservation,' Mr Wright added.

'They knew the questions that would come and had no convincing answer for them.'

The trial continues.