The Mossos request to track the mobiles of the parents of the abused baby in Barcelona

The regional police request the judge to geolocate the phones of the mother and father to reconstruct their steps in the days leading up to the child's admission to the Vall d'Hebron Hospital on March 16.

The Mossos d'Esquadra have asked the judge to authorise the tracking of the mobile phones of the mother and father of the baby who was admitted with serious injuries to the Vall d'Hebron Hospital in Barcelona on March 16, when he was six weeks old. The measure aims to reconstruct their location during the first days of that month, before the child arrived at the healthcare centre, and to determine if either of them could have been alone with him, according to sources close to the investigation.

The father, who is voluntarily testifying this Thursday, remains in prison. The mother was released from jail after more than a month following the decision of the Barcelona Court. The judge for violence against children and adolescents maintained the man's imprisonment on June 22, citing a risk of flight, the severity of the charges against him (continued abuse, injuries, and sexual assault), and the possibility that he could obstruct the case.

While awaiting the results of the geolocation and other requested proceedings, such as the psychological examination of the parents, the court took statements from five witnesses this Wednesday, all of whom were doctors or nurses from the Hospital del Mar and the Hospital de Sant Pau, centres that the child passed through before being admitted to Vall d'Hebron.

The healthcare staff from the Hospital del Mar explained before the judge, in the presence of prosecutor Elisabet Jiménez and the defence lawyers, that when the parents brought the child in, they did not detect any signs of abuse or abnormal behaviour from them. The witnesses did rule out that the bruise on the baby's scrotum was due to the urine bag that had been placed on him, as it would have only caused redness from the adhesive that held it.

“I have been practising for over 20 years and I have never encountered anything like this,” a doctor stated.

This injury to the scrotum and other anal injuries detected days later in another hospital raised alarms and led to suspicions of possible abuse by the parents, who were arrested in the Vall d'Hebron on March 18. The Hospital del Mar has not been reprimanded or sanctioned by the Generalitat as a result of this case.

The doctors from that centre reported that the mother never presented herself as a nurse, unlike what healthcare workers from other hospitals that the baby visited claimed. At the Mar, they performed an electrocardiogram because the child was agitated, had tachycardia, and would not stop crying.

The father admitted to his family that he had “shaken” the child, that he had treated him “roughly”, that he may have pulled his legs hard, and that he had wrapped him tightly in a blanket to calm him down. He confessed this to his brother-in-law, who brought up the topic after the mother mentioned it.

The baby, who is now with a foster family, was hospitalised for a month at Vall d'Hebron. The father's statement this Thursday takes place before the judge and prosecutors Elisabet Jiménez and Félix Mar.