Friday 23/January/2026 – 05:50 PM
Surveillance camera recordings in the state of Kahramanmaraş, southern Türkiye, revealed a shocking incident dating back to 2021, which showed that… Baby girl Deniz Esen Bozükular, who was only 5 days old at the time, was seriously assaulted inside a hospital, which resulted in her permanent physical and mental disability.
A Turkish nurse causes a baby to become disabled
According to Turkish media, a 14-minute video clip documented a nurse named Hazal Derrick hitting an infant on the head several times and violently pressing her leg while trying to draw a blood sample, which led to a broken leg and the child’s cessation of movement, according to what appeared in the recordings.
The nurse is facing a judicial trial on charges of intentional injury, with demands to be sentenced to imprisonment for a period of up to three years, after administrative investigations proved her involvement in the incident, and she was dismissed from her work at Suzhou Imam University Hospital for Health Research and Applications.
Details of the case go back to May 21, 2021, when the baby girl was born and transferred to the neonatal intensive care unit due to being underweight. Although the hospital administration discovered the assault after noticing swelling in the baby’s leg and reviewing the cameras, the child was transferred to a private hospital without informing her family of the truth about what happened.
The family later received their daughter suffering from cerebral palsy, epileptic seizures, and impaired mobility, and for years believed her condition was due to natural health causes. The truth was not revealed until June 2024, after the family received notification through the electronic government portal of a trial date, and it became clear that their child’s injury was a direct result of the violence to which she was exposed.
The family’s lawyer confirmed that the incident represented systematic torture against an infant who was unable to defend herself, calling for tightening the legal definition of the case and considering it as attempted murder, in light of the seriousness of the assault and its continuation for a long period, criticizing the failure to detain the accused since the incident occurred.
