A couple who subjected their two-year-old grandson to “distress, pain and misery” before callously murdering him have been jailed for life.
“Painfully thin” Ethan Ives-Griffiths suffered a catastrophic brain injury before he collapsed while staying at his grandparents' house on August 14, 2021. Michael Ives, 47, and Kerry Ives, 46, denied murder, but a jury took just one day to deliberate before finding the pair guilty following a trial which lasted over five weeks in July.
Jailing them at Mold crown court Mr Justice Martin Griffiths told Michael Ives he must serve a minimum of 23 years. Kerry Ives will be behind bars for a minimum of 17 years, which will be served concurrently with a sentence of six years for the charge of child cruelty.
Ethan's mother Shannon Ives, 28, of Rhes-y-Cae, near Holywell, was found guilty of causing or allowing his death and child cruelty. She was jailed for 12 years,.
The court heard Ethan had been staying at his grandparents’ house in Garden City, Flintshire, North Wales, with his mother. She had fled domestic violence from her home in Mold in June that year, the jury was told. Ethan died in hospital two days after collapsing.
He was so “desperately dehydrated” that medical experts said he would have died within 10 days even if he had not suffered a brain injury. The youngster's extended family has now called for "Ethan's Law" giving social services more powers if they are denied access to a child. Their petition has now reached 35,000 signatures.
The trial heard the boy was only 10 kilograms and severely underweight when he died, with 40 visible bruises or marks on his body. Jurors were visibly upset during the trial. They were shown CCTV from the family home of Michael Ives carrying his grandson by the top of his arm and appearing to punch him after putting him into a car seat.
The court heard Ethan had been placed on the child protection register, requiring him to be seen every 10 days, but when Shannon Ives last saw her social worker, on August 5, she spoke to him on the doorstep and told him Ethan was having a nap.
Nobody answered the door when a social worker went to visit in the days before Ethan’s death and a scheduled appointment with a health visitor on August 13 was cancelled. Michael Ives and Kerry Ives had accused their daughter of hitting her son, with Michael Ives telling the jury she was “quick-tempered” and would slap Ethan a couple of times a day.
But Shannon Ives told the court her parents were “horrible” and abused her as a child. She said she first left home at 16 because, from the age of four, she was “hit on a daily basis” by her father – who was also physically abusive to her seven siblings.
She said her father kept reptiles as pets and on one occasion dropped a box of live locusts on her. Saying she was “petrified” of him she also said he would insult her, referring to her as a “slag”. She said she was 'petrified' of him. She said: “We would get punched, kicked, we would get a belt used on us.”
Shannon cried in the witness box as she described how her father would shout at her son and smack him. He would make Ethan stand with his legs open wide and his hands on his head for up to two hours – sometimes in the middle of the night – if he kept his grandfather up or misbehaved. She said: “There they were, being violent to a little boy who had done nothing at all.”
Harrowing CCTV footage from August 4 showed Michael Ives carrying his grandson by the top of his arm in a way Caroline Rees KC, prosecuting, described as “as though Ethan was just a bag of rubbish to be slung out”.
The footage, taken from the back garden of the family's four-bedroom home, also showed Ethan unsteady on the trampoline, or lying down, while other children bounced around him.
After watching the video in court, Michael Ives said he felt “ashamed” and admitted being cruel and neglectful of the toddler, but denied mistreating him in other ways.
Michael and Kerry Ives were in the living room with Ethan at the time of his collapse while his mother was on the phone upstairs. Both told the jury “nothing” had happened to the toddler before he fainted as they watched television.
Kerry Ives said she immediately called Shannon Ives to come downstairs, but the court heard it was 18 minutes before she called emergency services.
Medical evidence pointed to the fact that something “horrific” happened just before the collapse, the trial was told. It said Ethan’s fatal head injury was caused by deliberate force or shaking and occurred at the time, or in the minutes before, he collapsed.
When the youngster was examined by doctors after his death, he was found to have abdominal injuries likely to have been caused by blows in the days before his collapse. Other injuries included bruises which were consistent with grip marks on his leg and face.
A safeguarding review is underway into how Ethan came to be killed, just five weeks after being identified as at-risk of significant harm and placed on the child protection register. In the 41 days between July 6, 2021, when the decision was taken to place Ethan on the register, and August 16, when he died, he was seen in person just once.
A spokesman for Flintshire Council said they were co-operating with the independent child practice review being carried out by the North Wales Safeguarding Board.
Ethan's aunt Rebecca Shone is calling on people to sign a petition to bring in Ethan's law. She said: "After four very long and distressing years, Ethan will finally have justice. Although this will not bring our Ethan back, it does provide some comfort and it allows us to try and learn to live on, to be able to finally try to get back to some sort of normality.
"Life will never be the same without Ethan but we will keep his spirit alive though every one of us who loved him and have fought for his justice."