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Innocent father faces access battle

The father, from Sutton, insisted he had not hurt his daughter. The baby’s mother, his then-partner, supported him.

When Ben Butler noticed that his baby daughter had gone limp and was gasping for air, he called immediately for an ambulance.

The new father had no idea that the health scare would mark the start of a three-year ordeal which would see him wrongly convicted of harming his child, and jailed for four months with a sex offender for a cellmate.

When the ambulance was slow to arrive, Mr Butler took the two-month-old baby by car to St Helier Hospital, south London.

Doctors at the hospital diagnosed bleeding on the brain, bleeding in the eye and swelling of brain tissue - the “triad” of injuries seen as indicators of a “shaken baby” who has been deliberately injured.

The father, from Sutton, insisted he had not hurt his daughter. The baby’s mother, his then-partner, supported him.

The baby was later transferred to St Thomas’ Hospital, in central London, where a different team of doctors said the head injury had in fact been caused at birth. She went on to make a full recovery.

Yet the couple were arrested in March 2007 and Mr Butler was charged with GBH and cruelty. At his trial at Croydon Crown Court in March 2009, he was convicted and given an 18-month sentence.

The conviction was finally quashed at the High Court this month following an extended legal battle. Yet Mr Butler, 30, a former removal man, said the ordeal had devastated his life and left him unable to find work.

Read more from The Telegraph