A woman whose two-year-old son who was allegedly murdered by his grandparents has told a court her mother and father were “horrible”.
Shannon Ives, 28, is accused of causing or allowing the death of toddler Ethan Ives-Griffiths, who suffered a fatal head injury while they were staying with her parents Michael Ives, 47, and Kerry Ives, 46, in Garden City, Flintshire, in August 2021.
Giving evidence at Mold Crown Court on Friday, Shannon Ives was asked how her parents were while she was growing up.
She told the court: “They were horrible.”
Ives said the couple stopped her from “going out, having a normal life”, didn’t allow her many friends and were abusive to her and her siblings.
She said: “We would get punched, kicked. We would get a belt used on us.”
Shannon Ives told the court she left home at 16 after telling a counsellor in college her father was being abusive and calling her a slag.
She said she later moved back home after splitting up from a partner she had been living with and would sleep on a mattress in the dining room.
Michael Ives would kick her, call her a slag and tell her he did not want her there as he walked past in the morning, she said.
On one occasion her father, who kept bearded dragons as pets, dropped a box of locusts on her, the court heard.
The jury was told Shannon Ives and Ethan had been living in Mold with his father Will Griffiths, but moved out in June 2021 after police were called and Mr Griffiths was arrested.
She said they initially went to stay with her sister in Garden City.
Shannon Ives told the court: “I’d just split up with Will so I was depressed.”
She said she would shout at Ethan but denied hitting him, apart from a tap to the hand or bottom, or punishing him.
The boy’s mother said: “Ethan was OK. He was playing with toys, he was talking, he was walking, he was doing everything.”
The jury has been told Ethan was underweight and dehydrated, with 40 visible injuries, when he suffered a catastrophic head injury on August 14 2021 and died in hospital two days later.
Michael and Kerry Ives, of Kingsley Road, Garden City, deny murder, an alternative count of causing or allowing the death of a child and cruelty to a person under 16.
Shannon Ives, of Rhes-y-Cae, near Holywell, denies causing or allowing the death of a child and cruelty to a person under 16.
