The baby was so badly shaken he is blind.
The base of the skull is flat because the brain has atrophied there.Future prospects: a lifetime of acute mental and physical impairment.
The father, a 20-year-old Salt Lake man, was sentenced Monday to one to 15 years in prison after pleading guilty to causing those injuries on April 9, 1998.
But the way relatives and friends of the now 1-year-old baby boy see it, the sentence in no way balances the ledger for what Brian Phil Childs did to Nesta Keegan Childs.
"Sometime in the next 15 years Brian will be able to walk away from this," said Kathy Wilson, Nesta's grandmother. "But Nesta will never be able to walk away.
Neither will Marci (Wilson, Nesta's mother) be able to walk away. She'll be facing a lifetime of care for a severely impaired child.
"To me, there isn't anything bad enough they could do to Brian Childs."
Third District Judge Pat B. Brian did his best under the law. He imposed the maximum allowable sentence, ordering Childs to the Utah State Prison for child abuse/neglect, a second-degree felony.
Brian fined Childs $10,000. He ordered Childs to pay restitution in full for all past, present and future care of the child.
"This is a crime where the punishment must in every sense of the the word fit the nature of the crime," Brian said. "The purpose of the sentence is to punish, to deter and to be appropriate.
"It is hoped this will be a deterrent for anyone unwilling or unable to control themselves in the care of a child."
Defense attorney Earl Xaiz made a last-ditch effort to get Childs' sentence reduced to a third-degree felony, carrying a zero-to-5-year term. Childs long had denied injuring Nesta. But when he pleaded guilty to the second-degree felony on Feb. 8, apparently it was with the understanding his sentence might be reduced to the third-degree charge.
"Denied," was Brian's curt answer when Xaiz asked for a reduction at Monday's sentencing.
Xaiz said afterward, "The prosecutor had agreed to the third-degree felony charge. The judge didn't go for it. This was an especially tough case. There was very little to say to the judge."
Friends and family of the baby and mother had plenty to say in the courtroom hallway.
"We're pleased he finally did plead guilty to this. It was a horrible crime," said Gilda Holder of Kearns, Nesta's foster mother, after authorities took the baby into custody while investigating the case. "Finally, after one year, he gets his just reward."
Primary Children's physicians said the child suffered severe intracranial hemorrhage, retinal hemorrhages, bruises and a broken rib.
But the hospital didn't get a crack at diagnosis or treatment very quickly.
The mother had left then 3-week-old Nesta with Childs for a 20-minute run to the store for ice cream. When she returned, the baby was limp. His eyes wouldn't focus. He wasn't crying.
"Instead it was grunting," police reports say.
But, as Kathy Wilson said, "Brian wouldn't let Marci take Nesta to the hospital right away. He said they couldn't afford it. He said she overreacted all the time and thought something was wrong every time the baby made a sound."
Nesta was so badly injured doctors feared he might die.
"Basically, Marcie loved that baby so hard he couldn't die," Holder said.
While pleased Childs received the maximum sentence for the crime for which he was charged, both women were left considerably frustrated by the legal system.
"When I heard they were thinking of pleading this down to a third-degree, I told (prosecutor Dane) Nolan this was not justice in any way, shape or form," Kathy Wilson said.
Holder said, "If an adult had done this much violence to another adult, they most likely would have been charged with attempted murder. But under Utah law all they came up with was the child abuse charge. Something's terribly wrong with that."
"He took that baby and shook him like a 2,000-pound gorilla would shake you," Kathy Wilson said. "And at that age a baby's brain is just like jelly."
Childs stood stoically during sentencing, his hands joined behind his back. He looked neither right nor left.
Often at sentencings, a judge will calmly ask the bailiff to escort the convicted person from the courtroom for transportation to jail. In this instance, Brian's flat voice betrayed an edge of emotion as he ended the proceedings with the brusque command:
"Take him away."