‘Unimaginable cruelty’

Drug-abusing parents who murdered their baby are jailed for life

A MoTHER and father who murdered their baby son 39 days after he was handed back to them by social services were jailed for life yesterday.

Shannon Marsden, 22, and Stephen Boden, 30, subjected ten-month- old Finley Boden to ‘vicious and repeated’ assaults at the family home.

He was found to have had 57 fractures among 130 injuries when he died during the Covid lockdown on Christmas Day 2020, as well as sepsis and pneumonia.

The injuries included a broken pelvis, broken shoulder, fractured shinbone, fractured collarbones, several fractured ribs and four separate thighbone fractures, as

well as 71 bruises and other burns. Jailing Marsden for 27 years and Boden for 29 yesterday, Mrs Justice Tipples told them: ‘You subjected your own baby son to unimaginable cruelty.’

The judge said the pair ‘worked together’ with one holding the baby to keep him quiet while the other attacked him. She added it would have been obvious that Finley was in terrible pain in the period before his death but the couple did nothing.

Instead, the ‘persuasive and accomplished liars’ plotted to hide him away from social workers and family members, claiming he had Covid to keep them from finding out the truth.

near the end of his life, his injuries meant he could not eat or sit up and even getting him dressed, changing his nappy or putting him in his pram would have caused him terrible pain, the judge said.

The couple showed no emotion as they were jailed yesterday.

It emerged that Boden, who started smoking cannabis aged nine, had 22 previous convictions for 33 offences. Marsden, who was 16 when she met Boden, said she started drinking alcohol aged nine and using cannabis aged ten.

Finley had been removed from his parents just days after his birth amid concerns about their violent relationship and heavy cannabis use.

But he was handed back to them after Derbyshire social services recommended he should be returned even though tests showed they both continued to smoke cannabis regularly.

A report by the family’s social worker recommended a six-month transition back to the parents’ care but a family court ruled it should happen over a much shorter eight-week period instead. They were handed the ‘healthy, chubby, happy little boy’ on november 17, 2020 but a little over a month later he was dead.

unemployed Boden said he found Finley not breathing in his bedroom after going up to check on him. An ambulance was called to their home in old Whittington, near Chesterfield, at 2.33am on Christmas Day and he was declared dead at Chesterfield Royal Hospital soon afterwards.

only hours after his son’s death, Boden was heard telling Marsden at hospital that he was going to sell Finley’s pushchair on eBay. He had also sent a text message two days before the child’s death saying:

‘I want to bounce him [Finley] off the walls.’

Boden told another relative they delayed calling an ambulance for an hour as he wanted to smoke cannabis, then hide the drugs.

Mary Prior, prosecuting, said the pair had never given an account of what they did to Finley or why they did it.

In a victim impact statement read to the court, a relative said: ‘They acted together to inflict all his injuries and then hide him away and allow him to die in such an awful way.

‘neither of you have shown any remorse. I can only describe you both as monsters.’

Eight of the 12- strong jury returned to court to see the couple jailed yesterday.

Mrs Tipples told Marsden and Boden: ‘You both knew Finley was very seriously ill and dying... yet you failed to seek any medical help for him and you made sure that he was not seen by anyone that could have rescued him.’

She said Finley’s ‘ daily experience was one of considerable pain, distress and suffering’.

She added it was obvious to both of them by December 16 that Finley was very seriously injured. They ‘ both knew full well that Finley did not have Covid’ but used it as a ‘ perfect excuse’ to keep social workers and family from seeing the boy.

Referring to his injuries, the

‘I can only describe you both as monsters’

‘Considerable pain and suffering’

judge said these ‘could only have been achieved by two people acting together’ and that video footage of Finley two days before he died in ‘appalling conditions’ was ‘deeply upsetting and chilling’.

She said: ‘You both still did nothing to help Finley. Rather, you continued to leave him to suffer. By the evening of December 23 he was plainly dying.’

Finley is the latest victim in the harrowing roll call of children killed at home during lockdown, including Star Hobson, Arthur LabinjoHughes and Logan Mwangi.

The nSPCC said the Government must implement changes recommended by previous reviews to ‘transform the child protection system and ensure the different agencies involved are able to work together effectively to focus on children and babies like Finley’.