HOULTON, Maine — A Hodgdon man accused of burning a 4-year-old boy with hot water last year denied in court Wednesday that the incident was intentional.
Shane Godfrin, 26, gave multiple stories to police about how the burns occurred, and the mother of the child covered for him at one point, according to court testimony.
Dr. Lawrence Ricci, a child abuse pediatrician and co-director of the Spurwink Child Abuse Program in Portland, testified the second-degree scalding injuries suffered by the child when he was alone with Godfrin and his 5-month-old step-brother on March 16 were “inflicted immersion burns.”
Godfrin was arrested Oct. 16, 2014, at a home in Orient, according to Sheriff Darrell Crandall of the Aroostook County Sheriff’s Department. He was indicted on a felony charge of assault that was kept sealed by the court until shortly before he could be found and arrested in order to keep him from fleeing.
Godfrin, who later was released on $1,000 bail, pleaded not guilty to the crime and participated in a jury-waived trial Wednesday in Aroostook County Superior Court in Houlton before Justice E. Allen Hunter.
The 4-year-old victim, whose name is not being released, lived in the home with Godfrin and his mother, Elizabeth Scott, who was in a relationship with Godfrin. Scott and Godfrin’s 5-month-old son also lived in the home.
In court Wednesday, Assistant District Attorney Kurt Kafferlin said the 4-year-old boy was burned on March 16 but was not taken to Houlton Regional Hospital to receive medical care until March 23.
An emergency room nurse from the hospital testified the boy suffered burns on his left and right legs and was still limping a week after the accident, which indicated he was in pain. Evidence photos exhibited in court showed the burns on his feet, toes and calves.
The first witness, Elizabeth Scott, testified that Godfrin told her when she called him from work on March 16 that he started a bath for her older son, then went to change their 5-month-old’s diaper. He told her he then heard her older son screaming and ran to the bathroom to find he had fallen out of the tub, saying the water was too hot.
The boy’s mother testified he did not like to be in the tub when the water was even remotely hot, and they had a system where they turned off their hot water heater each night to save money. She also said someone had been into their home to repair the breaker on their hot water heater. She admitted upon questioning from Kafferlin that when she was first questioned by a Department of Human Services caseworker she said she was the one who had given her son the bath that had burned him.
“I was scared,” she said. “I was nervous that [Godfrin] would go to jail for leaving the water running.”
Scott said she did not take her son to the hospital immediately because “he was not complaining” of pain.
Scott and Godfrin told police that while the boy’s burns began to blister and he was picking at them, they said he went about his normal activities after the incident.
Maine State Police Detective Jeffrey Clark testified Godfrin told him he was “out shoveling snow” when the boy was in the tub.
Dr. Lawrence Ricci testified the child’s legs were burned in a “sock like pattern” and that there was no reasonable explanation for it other than the burns being inflicted by an adult in the home. He said in water temperatures of 140 degrees, which is how hot the family estimated they kept their water heater, the child would have seen burns in three seconds and would have suffered “instant bouts of severe pain.”
Ricci also said any child who normally stepped into a tub of water that hot and was not being held in the water would have hopped out.
In a recorded interview played in court, Capt. Ross McQuade of the sheriff’s office could be heard telling Godfrin that Ricci had studied the photos and determined the injuries only could have been inflicted by an adult. Godfrin repeatedly denied hurting the child or getting angry and putting him in the tub as punishment. While he admitted he had used marijuana in the past, he denied using the drug or any other substances or alcohol on the day of the child’s injury.
Defense Attorney Cathy Lufkin introduced several witnesses who testified the family had been having trouble with the water heater suddenly producing water that either was too hot or too cold and others who said the boy liked to play with faucets that turn water on and off.
Following Wednesday’s testimony, Justice Hunter estimated he could issue a verdict by April 22.