By Simon Armstrong, The Evening Chronicle
A helpless four-year-old girl was abandoned home alone after being subjected to an horrific catalogue of abuse by her stepmother, a court was told.
A jury heard the youngster had been branded with a hot metal object, burned with a cigarette and whipped.
Nigerian Adesuwa Ogbeide moved to Tyneside with the four-year-old called Meg - a daughter from her husband's previous relationship with another woman - and was pregnant with another child, Kelly.
The court heard police and social services were alerted when staff at a nursery spotted the injuries and changes in the girl's behaviour.
Mrs Ogbeide admitted neglecting the child. She pleads not guilty to causing grievous bodily harm and to causing unnecessary suffering to a child under 16 by causing or permitting the branding, burning or whipping on the first day of a trial at Newcastle Crown Court.
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Prosecutor Chris Knox said: "The child was burned by her stepmother who was her carer.
"The prosecution say that during the period between Christmas and New Year last year, she was branded by the defendant using a hot u-shaped implement - possibly a handle from a cooking implement. For some reason, which we cannot explain, the defendant branded the child on her cheek leaving a bad, permanent scar.
"There were two other similar marks on her back and trunk."
Officers called at the family's address at Hartington Street, Elswick, on January 13 and, although Meg was there, her stepmother was not.
She returned around 90 minutes later having been out with her youngest child Kelly, who was then two months old.
Meg was taken to see a consultant paediatrician at Newcastle's Royal Victoria Infirmary.
Mr Knox said: "He found a number of marks that were photographed and these included a burn mark on her cheek, other marks on her torso and also what the Crown says is a cigarette burn to her knee and elbow. Another mark was suggestive of her having been whipped using a very thin object.
"Clearly the Crown say she must have been ill-treated or abused for these marks to have been created. The defendant failed to protect the child."
Mr Knox said an investigation was launched into the family's background, which he said "to some extent is mysterious".
The jury heard Ogbeide went from Nigeria to Manchester in September last year and then came to the North East. Meg was then enrolled at a local nursery.
Mr Knox added: "Staff were not concerned about her physical condition before Christmas.
"However, when Meg returned on January 5 there were concerns, partly because of seeing a change in the child's demeanour from being a happy and lively well-cared for child to being, in reality, none of those things."
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