My associate killed our child: Cameron was simply 14 weeks outdated when his father gave him accidents equal to a 70mph automotive crash. But the actions of the so-called justice system have made issues even worse, writes SHEREE BLACK

Had he lived, Sheree Black’s son Cameron would be turning 18 this year. Of course she wonders what her wide-eyed smiley baby would look like today, entering adulthood, but she refuses to indulge that curiosity.

‘There are these AI age-progression apps, but I’ve never wanted to go there,’ she explains. ‘What if they showed him looking like his father?’

Sheree, who’s 36, likes to believe Cameron is still with her, in the form of a guardian angel. But that thought is both a comfort and a source of deep pain.

‘I truly believe he is looking after me,’ she says. ‘But they say that babies grow in the spirit world, so this would mean he also knows that his daddy murdered him. What must that be like for him?’

Sheree’s torment is unfathomable – and ongoing. To lose your only child is devastating, but the circumstances here were horrific. Cameron was just 14 weeks old when he was killed by his dad – Sheree’s former partner Ryan Leslie – in 2008.

In 2011, Leslie, who was then 26, was sentenced to life imprisonment for murder and grievous bodily harm, with the judge at Belfast Crown Court calling him a ‘dishonest and deeply manipulative’ individual.

Cameron had suffered brain damage due to ‘blunt force trauma’ to the head, but also 14 fractured ribs, bilateral retinal haemorrhages and extensive bruising.

Sheree tells me she is haunted by the fact she still does not know exactly what Ryan did to her son to cause such catastrophic injuries. And yes, she wants to know, ‘so that I can move on’.

‘In court they said the injuries were so severe they were comparable to Cameron being in a car crash at 70mph,’ she says.

‘I believe he threw him against the sofa – it was a cheap one and you could feel the wood through the sponge. But I’ll probably never know.’

If there was any comfort to be clung to in this desperate situation, it was that justice had been served.

While Sheree knew that a ‘life’ sentence rarely means life, she was reassured that Leslie would be behind bars for a minimum of 17 years before his release would even be discussed. She had been led to believe he was likely to serve closer to 21 years, given his lack of remorse or admission of guilt.

Imagine her horror then when, a year ago, she received a letter informing her that Leslie was being considered for early release, having spent just 14 years in prison.

When she publicly objected, starting a petition to keep Leslie in prison for the full duration, she was floored to receive an ‘off the record’ phone call from a probation official, telling her that Leslie had made some sort of admission of guilt in 2017 – a factor that could be significant when it comes to deciding if he met the criteria for parole.

‘I couldn’t believe what I was being told – in a WhatsApp call too, which I think was inappropriate. I was told that Ryan had actually confessed, to a point.

‘The woman from the probation service said “I think it’s genuine”. I asked why I was only discovering this now and said I wanted to know the details. What exactly had he confessed to? Had he said “I, Ryan Leslie, killed my son?”

‘She said “no, not exactly”, but also that it was only a verbal confession – and Ryan was refusing to allow me to have details of it, in case I shared them on social media. The woman said “which you can understand”.’

Sheree pauses, still reeling, still furious: ‘No, I cannot understand. The fact is that I don’t believe he is sorry. I believe that, whatever he’s said, it’s been the bare minimum to allow them to tick their boxes and let him out.

‘He even had the gall to tell the probation people “if Sheree wants to know anything she can write to me”.

‘The judge said specifically that Ryan was a manipulator who didn’t care about Cameron but was just using him to get to me. And they want me to write to this man?’

Sheree’s situation has highlighted a worrying gap in victim information rights. There is no statutory right for people in her position to be told about confessions – particularly if they are not directly linked to parole decisions. ‘I couldn’t believe that, as it stands, I don’t have the right to be told any information he may have shared about the murder of my son.’

Sheree is now campaigning for a change in the law in Northern Ireland (where parole issues are devolved), but says the principle applies across the rest of the UK. ‘At the moment the perpetrators have more rights than the families.’

Sheree was only 19 – little more than a child herself – when she had to turn her baby’s life support machine off. ‘I had to end my son’s life. I held him and felt the life go out of him,’ she says. ‘That shapes you. How could it not?’

On one level, she has done a remarkable job of rebuilding her life. She left Northern Ireland soon after the trial, unable to cope with the pitying looks, eventually moving to Ibiza around 2018 and starting a skincare business, Mia Piel.

She has also recently ventured into the classroom to teach English – a breakthrough of sorts.

‘I always loved children but I’ll never forget the looks of people around me the first time I held a baby after Cameron died. That’s hard to deal with.’

Sheree’s awful story began in 2006 when, aged 16, she met Leslie, who was then 23, moving into his flat in the town of Newtownabbey. It was a ‘volatile’ relationship from the off.

Her pregnancy the following year did not improve things. At his trial, it was claimed there were at least seven occasions on which Leslie attacked Sheree, dragging her by the hair and kicking and punching her. She never considered going to the police.

‘I was young and naïve,’ she says today. ‘Now I see I was being coerced and groomed. By a monster.’

Cameron was born on May 30, 2008. He may not have been planned, but his mother was instantly besotted.

‘I knew from the off that I wanted to keep him and that I could look after him,’ she says. ‘My mum says she still remembers me just looking at his beautiful wee face and saying “Wow. He’s mine”.’

Yet even in the first weeks of their tiny baby’s life, Sheree remembers Leslie being verbally abusive to him.

By mid August of that year, the pair had split up, Sheree taking Cameron to live with her mum. But when Leslie asked to have Cameron overnight, she agreed. It’s the decision ‘that will torment me for the rest of my life’.

‘He was his dad,’ she explains. ‘My parents had split up when I was young, but I’d always had a good relationship with both of them. I didn’t think he would touch his own son. It wasn’t on my radar.’

There were only two occasions on which Leslie had sole care of his child. On the first – forensic evidence would later prove – he broke 14 of the baby’s ribs, handing Cameron back to Sheree on August 30, with the explanation ‘he was crying and crying’.

Puzzled about why her normally cheerful baby seemed in pain, Sheree ‘gave him Calpol because I thought he had colic’. She knows now that Cameron was only returned to her after his initial bruising had faded.

Then on Tuesday, September 2, Leslie took Cameron again. ‘And the next time I saw my baby, was in the hospital on the Thursday, when they were doing brain scans,’ says Sheree, who had received a call from Leslie saying she needed to get to the hospital. ‘I’ll never forget. We were in a room and the head of neurology was saying to me that they didn’t think his injuries were accidental.

‘He kept saying “non-accidental”. I was saying “I don’t know what you mean”. He had to spell it out: “We think someone did this to Cameron”.’

She was still in a daze as police and social services moved in, but remembers Leslie trying to grab her hand, ‘pretending we were still together’. She pulled away from him – prompting separate interviews.

‘He came up with a cock-and-bull story about how Cameron had hit his head on a plastic bath and he’d tried to do CPR, but he didn’t mention this until hours afterwards. It was all demolished in court.’

Leslie was arrested. It was left to Sheree, numb, to sit with their child.

Although brain-dead when he was admitted to hospital, 14-week-old Cameron survived for three days, hooked up to a life support machine. ‘It was so difficult to even touch him because of the amount of wires, but towards the end they let me climb on the bed with him’.

There was nothing the doctors could do, but the decision about when to turn off life support was hers.

‘I remember thinking that since he came into the world on a Saturday, he should leave it on a Saturday.

‘My mum and dad were in the room, but even when the switch had gone off it took him 20 minutes to die. His heart was still that strong.’

Afterwards, her mum thanked the doctors and nurses who had cared for Cameron and said that she imagined they saw this sort of thing ‘all the time’. But Sheree recalls the medics were in tears and replied ‘no, we really do not’.

‘I think as I got older, I realised how his death affected so many people,’ she says. ‘There were police officers who couldn’t interview Ryan because they had kids of their own. It wasn’t just another case for them.’

How does a person rebuild their life after something like this?

The victims of violent crime often say they have their own life sentence, and Sheree’s experience reflects that.

‘I’ve always found it hard when people ask if I have children. Saying “I had a child but he died” leads to them asking “how” and to land them with “his daddy killed him” is too much. But equally I never wanted to deny that Cameron had existed.’

By 2019, Sheree was settling into life in Ibiza, but her life went into freefall after she became pregnant and her then-partner made it clear that fatherhood wasn’t on his agenda.

‘I had a termination,’ she admits, quietly. ‘I was always against abortion and could never understand how anyone could do that.

‘But I knew that when I had another baby I wanted to do it with a man by my side. I wanted a stable home for a child. But there was all this guilt. I was so messed up, so angry inside. Cameron had died and I wanted to be a mum, yet I’d terminated a pregnancy. I was snapping at people at work, lashing out.

‘I suppose when you carry trauma, you can only do it for so long.’

It was only then, she believes, that she even started to deal with that trauma.

By 2024 she was making good progress in coming to terms with what had happened. By then, she’d met an Italian man called Marco, and finally felt secure in a relationship – secure enough to talk openly about Cameron. ‘He’s taken all my baggage on board, and it was Marco who encouraged me to think about teaching. He knows how much I love children.’

That letter about Leslie’s parole plunged her back into darkness, however. It sparked a return trip to Northern Ireland – the place of so many ghosts – to launch her petition. Back home, she struggled to sleep.

‘The last year has been horrific. In some ways, it sent me backwards,’ she says. ‘At times it has felt like I’m losing Cameron all over again. I started to dream about Ryan, which I’d never done before. I’ve had nightmares about him chasing me.’

The timescale for Leslie’s release is still uncertain. His parole has not been approved, ‘but I don’t know whether he will be out in a few weeks, months. I will be told, but it’s hard living with this uncertainty.’

She has written a victim impact statement setting out why she does not feel that Leslie deserves any sort of early freedom. ‘I can’t believe I’ve even had to sum up the effect of all this on my life,’ she says. ‘Where do you begin?’

Sheree adds that during Leslie’s trial ‘some people were saying to me “don’t you just want him dead”, but that would have been too easy.

‘I wanted him to serve his time, and to think of Cameron’s wee face every night when he went to sleep.

‘It never occurred to me that I might have to face him out, back on the streets, before Cameron would even be 18.’