Huddersfield GBH father to battle jail term

Jun 23 2009 By Sam Casey

A FATHER who admitted inflicting injuries that left his baby son brain damaged and blind for life is appealing against his prison sentence.

And the news that Paul Sykes is to try to get his four-year term for grievous bodily harm cut came as his ex-partner went on national television to tell her story.

Sykes, 40, was jailed in April for GBH against Charlie Senior.

The tot was seriously injured in 2007, at the age of 15 weeks, when Sykes shook him at the family’s home at Willow Grove in Golcar.

He was left blind and may need care for the rest of his life.

Sykes, 40, of North Street, Lockwood, had been due to face trial in February after denying the GBH charge, but changed his plea to ‘guilty’ at the last minute.

Bradford Crown Court was told that he accepted using excessive and unlawful force by shaking Charlie, but had done so because he was having difficulty breathing.

The court heard it was not Sykes’s first offence of GBH against a baby.

He was given a nine-month suspended sentence in 1992 for breaking the leg of a two-month-old girl, who was also left with facial and abdominal bruising.

The Judge who sentenced Sykes, Recorder Caroline Wigin, said the two offences showed a pattern of behaviour.