SPOKANE, Wash. – 22-year-old Amlyann Harry is being charged with assault of a child first degree after she allegedly shook, slapped, and threw her five-month-old baby boy onto the floor Sunday night. The infant is not expected to recover.Harry is being held on a $1,000,000 bond in the Spokane County Jail as her baby fights for his life in Sacred Heart’s NICU. According to the prosecutor in court on Monday, the infant is not expected to recover from the brain bleed caused by his mother’s alleged assault. The judge in Monday’s court hearing also ordered a Domestic Violence No Contact Order between Harry and her son. According to court documents, Harry told Spokane Valley Police her baby had been crying to no end, so she “shook her baby and then slapped her baby three times with an open hand on his face.” Harry then admitted to throwing her baby “an estimated three feet to the floor” where the baby landed on his back and stopped breathing and became unresponsive. This is when Harry’s mother and the baby’s grandmother came home to the horrific situation. According to court documents, Harry said she believed the baby was dead – though she made no effort to administer CPR or call 911; her mother did that. Once medics arrived and took over CPR, the defendant told police this was not the first time she had abused her child. Harry said she felt quote “dead inside” and had never felt affection for her baby. On Monday, Amy Vega, the executive director for Vanessa Behan, a non-profit childcare organization whose main mission is to protect kids and support families, weighed in on the abusive situation. “It makes me want to cry, there’s no reason for it, we know how to prevent that,” Vega said. “How do we help parents know just to ask for help, it’s really okay.” Vanessa Behan’s mission stems from the abuse of a little girl, named Vanessa Behan, who died from extensive child abuse, not much older than the baby boy at the center of this story. “This is how we got our start, because of a little girl who was abused to the point of death, and so we do hear these stories and they break your heart,” Vega said. Vega has been in this line of care for decades; she’s heard and seen her fair share of child abuse stories that one could never forget. “There are so many circumstances that go on in a situation like this and in any kind of a family dynamic, that if we could step back, without passing judgment, ‘how do we support a parent so that we don’t get to this outcome,’” Vega said. Vega doesn’t know Harry or her family’s situation personally, but she does know many families who struggle. “I think that we live in a society that is so quick to judge a parent and I think that lends to parents being afraid to ask for help,” she said. So that’s why Vanessa Behan is here to serve kids and families; whether your struggles with parenthood feel severe or minor, this team provides 24-hour care and support for families, free of charge. The goal is to prevent stories of abuse like this one from ever being told again. “We want to be on that prevention side of things because obviously we see the devastating impact and effect of child abuse in a situation like this,” Vega said.If you need help with childcare, big or small, you can call Vanessa Behan at (509)-598–7490.
