This is the first picture of Elsie Scully-Hicks, the 18-month-old girl allegedly murdered by her father just two weeks after he and his husband formally adopted her.
Matthew Scully-Hicks allegedly physically abused Elsie for months before shaking her to death at the family home in the Cardiff suburb of Llandaff.
A jury has been told that Scully-Hicks, 31, was struggling to cope with the girl, telling his husband, Craig Scully-Hicks, that Elsie was “a psycho” and “satan dressed up in a babygrow”, while neighbours allegedly heard him swearing at and insulting the child.
Cardiff crown court has heard that Elsie was removed from her natural mother, a drug user, within days of her birth in November 2014. She was placed in the care of Vale of Glamorgan council and went to live with the Scully-Hickses when she was 10 months old.
Craig has told the court he had wanted a “daddy’s little princess”. She was “tiny” when she arrived, he said, but “loud and bouncy”. Matthew Scully-Hicks stayed at home to look after the girl while Craig, a 36-year-old account manager, carried on with his job, often working away.
Craig insisted their home was happy and always full of friends and family. He said: “My house was filled with love and happiness all the time. All the time. If I had suspected anything I wouldn’t have tolerated it.”
Asked by Matthew Scully-Hicks’s barrister, Robert O’Sullivan QC, if he had ever heard his husband shouting at Elsie or her adoptive sibling, Craig replied: “No.” He said his husband was nicknamed “safety boy” by some family members because he was so sensible.
Elsie was formally adopted on 12 May 2016. On 25 May at 6.18pm, Wales ambulance service received a 999 call from Matthew Scully-Hicks.
“I was just changing my daughter for bed and she went all floppy and limp,” he told the operator. During the 999 call, Scully-Hicks could be heard saying: “Oh my God” and “this is horrible”.
Paramedics and police found Elsie not breathing and in cardiac arrest. Scully-Hicks allegedly explained to a paramedic the child had “screamed out as if in pain, then collapsed”.
At the hospital, Scully-Hicks told police, doctors and his husband that he had changed Elsie on the floor in front of the television.
He said he had taken the dirty nappy out to the kitchen, leaving Elsie on the floor, and returned to find her apparently sleeping. He said she had not responded and he had begun CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation).
The prosecution alleges Matthew Scully-Hicks murdered Elsie after months of abusing her physically.
A postmortem found Elsie had recent and older bleeding on both sides of her brain. She had haemorrhages in both eyes and fractures to her skull and her ribs.
On Thursday a paramedic, Jonathan Aberg, told the jury he had attended the couple’s home with police at 6.25pm on 25 May.
Aberg said: “He [Scully-Hicks] directed us round to the right, to where the child was. I believe she was on her back.
“She appeared lifeless. A little blue. We started CPR. She wasn’t breathing. She had no pulse.”
Elsie was taken to the paediatric intensive care unit at the University Hospital of Wales, he confirmed. She arrived at the hospital at 6.53pm and her care was taken over by hospital staff. Elsie died at the hospital in the early hours of 29 May.
Matthew Scully-Hicks, from Delabole, Cornwall, denies murder. The trial continues.
