Spice Girl Geri Halliwell wept on the stand today as she testified against the nanny who is accused of injuring her daughter.
Ginger Spice described in emotional detail the day in August 2006 when she discovered her daughter, Bluebell Madonna, was being abused at the hands of her nurse Jasmine Schmidt.
While away for a countryside weekend, she awoke to Bluebell’s “hysterical” and “angry” cries and ran into the nursery only to be blocked from entry by the German-born nurse.
“[Bluebell] was quite hysterical, crying, really angry crying.” she recalled of her then-two-month-old.
“[Schmidt] put her hands across the doorway almost blocking me going in. She was quite big and I stopped. Then she said, ‘Leave it, I will swaddle her’,” Geri quoted Schmidt as saying. “I felt she was trying to take care of me because I would get a good night’s sleep so I said OK and left it there.”
When asked if she had heard her daughter cry like that before, the performer, who has described feeling “tortured” by the abuse, continued: “Just in the last few days I heard that… It was really… just hyperventilating crying.”
The next morning, while nursing Bluebell, Geri noticed the red marks on her daughter’s head and cheek and a bruise on her arms.
She describes confronting the 31-year-old Schmidt, who looked “vacant” and explained that Bluebell had been tossing and turning in the night and said she’d need a meningitis test.
Dressed in a cream dress and long overcoat, Geri told the court: “I called my doctor, but then something inside me felt funny towards Jasmin because of her remarks. I went to my bedroom and closed the door because I felt quite frightened of her. I was scared of her as we were in the middle of nowhere.”
They cut short the trip and Geri instructed Schmidt (above) to stay away from Bluebell and instead sit in the rear with her Pomeranian, Daddy.
Schmidt is also accused of abusing another boy in 2003 and the joint trial is expected to continue for the next three weeks. It’s unclear how much time she faces if convicted.
(Via Page Six)
