A GRAVESEND man has been jailed for 10 years for launching a "brutal" attack on a one-month old baby who urinated on him.

Nathan Rawling, 36, who lived in St Gregory’s Crescent at the time of the assault, denied causing GBH with intent but was found guilty by a jury at Maidstone Crown Court on Monday afternoon.

The baby boy was left with 26 rib fractures, two fractured collar bones and a broken right arm following what the prosecution described as a "frenzied and brutal" attack on the morning of December 1, 2011.

On sentencing Rawling, Judge Jeremy Carey said: "You broke his arm and did so in a way that must have caused him immense pain.

"You twisted his penis in a brutal way in your anger because he urinated on you when you went to change him and most fundamentally of all you squeezed him so tight, so hard and so persistently that you fractured 25 bones separately in his rib cage - a quite devastating injury from which he nearly died.

"The clear message is that you committed the grossest abuse of your position of trust and you did so when you were wholly out of control."

Over the course of the three-week trial the jury of six women and six men heard a series of harrowing accounts including about the series of events leading up to and after the attack on the child, who cannot be named for legal reasons.

Rawling claimed the chest and arm injuries occurred accidentally when the baby stopped breathing and turned blue so he performed CPR despite being a novice.

The Kent County Council electrician maintains the genital injury was caused by his kneeling on the area by mistake.

Rawling will serve a minimum of five years behind bars.

Fears over vigilante attack

Detective Chief Inspector Andy Pritchard, of the Kent Police public protection unit, praised Gravesend residents for "holding it together" amid fears of vigilante attacks on Rawling.

He said: "It became more of a vigil of peace than vigilantism and we are grateful to the Gravesend community for allowing us to investigate this crime properly and bring it to its conclusion."

Mr Pritchard added: "I have never seen injuries this extensive on a child that has survived and indeed is now thriving.

"We would not have expected this child to have survived apart from the good work of Darent Valley Hospital and its staff."