A MAN has been jailed for seven and a half years after leaving a baby blind and with catastrophic brain damage.

Stephen Sweeney attacked the five-week-old child while on holiday with the boy's mother in September 2013.

Sweeney violently shook the baby and squeezed his body while apparently changing him.

The 27-year-old, when later confronted over what happened, said: "I was tired."

Sweeney returned to the High Court in Glasgow yesterday after pleading guilty to assaulting the child to the danger of his life.

Judge John Morris QC described the case as a "truly tragic" and said the boy's life had been "devastated" by what happened.

He told Sweeney: "Be under no illusions, you pled guilty to a deliberate attack. You have accepted responsibility for severely damaging an innocent young child.

"No sentence can adequately reflect what you done."

The judge said the jail-term would have been 10 years, but for the guilty plea.

After the hearing, the boy's mother said the sentence was "just and fair".

In a statement, she added: "This is the kind of nightmare that you read about in the news and never believe that it could happen to your own child."

Frances McMenamin QC, defending, said Sweeney will have to "suffer the consequences" of what he did for the rest of his life.

She told the court: "Mr Sweeney has great difficulty coming to terms that what he did in those few moments...changed his life, but, above all else, the little boy's life changed as well."