Christopher Sellman jailed for five years for killing baby daughter

A man who killed his newborn daughter the first time he was left alone with her was jailed for five years today. Christopher Sellman’s daughter, Tiffany Sellman Burdge was just 25 days old when she died after suffering heart failure and bleeding to the brain while alone with her father in November 2008.

Her death could have been prevented if information about the risk he posed to children had been shared, a serious case review found.

He had a conviction for assault and a caution for child neglect before being found guilty of his daughter’s manslaughter.

Sellman, 24, was playing a computer game while looking after Tiffany and became “annoyed” when she cried, the judge said today.

“You picked her up and slammed her down on to a padded changing mat with a view to changing her nappy,” Mr Justice Bean added.

“Your daughter, Tiffany, was left in your care for the first time when she was only one month old.

“Within an hour she was effectively dead.”

Passing sentence at Inner London Crown Court today, he said Sellman, from Tunbridge Wells Kent, intended his daughter no harm but had treated her “roughly” and unlawfully killed her.

“This is a tragic case,” he said.

Sellman made up a story about having slipped and dropped her, which the jury did not believe. He told a number of people at least five different versions of events, the court heard.

The judge added that Tiffany was “more than usually vulnerable because of a skull fracture she suffered at birth”.

But he said: “Any one-month-old baby is tiny, fragile and vulnerable.”

The judge added that he found Sellman was a devoted father who was thrilled to have a daughter and showed her no animosity before this incident.

It was a “single incident without pre-meditation”, he said.

The baby girl turned blue and, despite “desperate and frantic” attempts by the defendant and emergency services to save her, later died.

Sellman was cleared of murder but found guilty of manslaughter.

Two other children under Sellman’s care had been taken away from him and a former partner by children’s social services after concerns were raised.

But opportunities to protect Tiffany were missed by children’s social services and health agencies, the report, published in March, found.

Relatives twice sought to alert agencies that Sellman’s partner, Pamela Burdge, was pregnant with Tiffany, but the information was not passed on and was never registered.

Had Sellman been identified as the father and the extent of Ms Burdge’s childhood problems known, “in all probability, care proceedings and action to protect Tiffany as soon as she was born” would have been implemented, the report said. Tiffany’s death “might well have been averted”, it found.