“It is difficult to see that anything could adequately explain or justify what you have done to the child.”
A woman who tried to murder a toddler by repeatedly giving adult medication to the child was jailed today as a judge condemned her actions as “utterly wicked”. Laura Docherty gave the little girl antidepressant and pain killing drugs resulting in her needing to be resuscitated and placed on a ventilator during the prolonged abuse.
Docherty, 35, had denied attempting to murder the child during a trial at the High Court in Edinburgh but was unanimously found guilty of the offence by a jury. A judge told her after she was convicted of the crime that the evidence led at her trial was “deeply troubling and truly shocking”.
Judge Michael O’Grady KC said it appeared from parts of the evidence that Docherty had “a troubled and unhappy life” and added: “No doubt at least some of that will not be of your making.”
But the judge said: “It is difficult to see that anything could adequately explain or justify what you have done to the child. Whatever your own trials and tribulations, whatever the turmoil in your own life, what you did to her was utterly wicked.”
“It is impossible to forget the sight of a young child, who should have been in the flower of her childhood, prone in the back of an ambulance, desperately struggling to breathe, desperately struggling to hang on by a thread to life.”
The judge said she was willing to throw away that life “for nothing more than the drama of the moment and the attention you seem to seek at every turn”.
Mr O’Grady said she must have understood the pain, misery and fear inflicted on the child victim. He added: “Indeed you saw and heard it with your own eyes and ears.”
The judge told Docherty that in dealing with this “anxious matter” he would require to obtain a background report on her and said: “Further, in the disturbing circumstances of this case, I consider I require some psychiatric assessment.” He told jurors that it was “a very troubling case”.
Defence counsel Simon Gilbride told the court that a report on Docherty was previously obtained from a psychiatrist, but that had been dealing with issues such as her fitness for trial.
Docherty, formerly of Glenrothes, in Fife, carried out her crime against the child from the age of two between April 2021 and February 2023 at an address in the Niddrie area of Edinburgh, at a ward at the Royal Hospital for children and Young People, in Edinburgh and elsewhere.
She assaulted and attempted to murder the victim by repeatedly administering the drugs Amitriptyline, Propranolol and Dihydrocodeine to the child which were medications not prescribed for her.
The victim, as a consequence, suffered seizures and episodes of reduced consciousness. She required to be resuscitated, admitted to hospital and put on a ventilator and the girl was subjected to medical investigations and procedures.
One man told the court that Docherty sent him a message trying to get him to give Amitriptyline to the girl but he said tablets out a blister pack were adult medication and he would never give such to a child. He said: “I gave her a spoonful of Calpol.”
Docherty was on bail during her trial but was remanded in custody while reports are prepared on her ahead of sentencing.
