Teenager guilty of murder.

I agree that the bin bag disposal was ill-thought out, but we don’t know if that was by necessity - ie she’d had a different plan, but the pain/blood loss/exhaustion of giving birth thwarted her - or she just panicked. Perhaps she didn’t realise the bin bag had blood on so assumed it would just be put out along with the rubbish with her brother none the wiser and would be taken away, like the baby never existed?

I don’t agree that liars change their story often. They usually choose a narrative, which they rehearse in their head and decide is feasible, and that then becomes their story. Because she ‘couldn’t remember’ a lot of things that would make any questioning easy to block, eg “Where exactly were you when…..?” can easily be parried by “I don’t remember”. That means she’d only need the outline of a false explanation. Everything difficult or more detailed could be ‘forgotten’. It sounds like they got very little information from her. What she said that was false, they disproved.

Personally I think partly she was ignorant of just how much a medical report could show, and so thought if she stuck to her story no-one could prove any different. Rather like the naïveté of the poster above who also suggested that perhaps the baby had fallen on its head onto the floor during birth and that accounted for the head injuries. In fact, the PM showed Stanley’s skull had been crushed by opposing forces - ie she stamped on his head or ground it into the floor. Perhaps Mayo thought that there wouldn’t even be a PM for a ‘stillborn’ (according to her) baby?

If it were just that in isolation, I’d agree with you. But if someone does know what they’ve done, and decides they will brazenly lie they normally actually try and cover up the evidence. The way she just left the blood. Just left the body in a bin bag by the door and asked her brother to take it out to the bins. The judge highlighted her efforts as “half hearted” and “pathetic” while saying she was actually quite smart, intelligence wise.

You see this failure to conceal the baby’s body in cases that meet the disturbed mental state for infanticide. One women did the same to her baby in a park, and then left the body under a tree. Another threw her baby off a balcony and left the body in the garden. Mayo put the body in a bag and also left it to be found.

A person who is guilty and wants you to believe a fabricated version of events isn’t going to leave all the evidence to be easily found.

Liars also tend to change their story when you go back and question them over a period of months/years. He story did not change once. The psychiatrist said that her story is actually a false memory, as in not made up lies to conceal what she actually remembers. What she remembers and believes is not reality, but it is real to her.

And the pregnancy denial delusion- also in her medical records. And the method of killing, also consistent with the psychotic subtype of pregnancy denial.

Because, as one the of examining psychiatrists noted, she had no memory of hurting the baby much less killing him. She had a completely different memory as to happened and what she did. This is called a “false memory” and is also evidence of psychosis

Is it though? When people lie, they construct a false narrative on purpose to explain things. Mayo’s was that the baby just fell out of her and banged his head, but wasn’t alive anyway because he had the cord round his neck. This is untrue. Why’s it a false memory rather than a false narrative (lie)?

Very early on in this thread somebody said Mayo had no memory of what happened because she used a phrase like ,”I don’t know. I must have [done x]….” when referring to the cotton wool in Stanley’s throat. They said those words showed she had no memory, but that’s simply not true. I’m a teacher. Children often say those words when denying things, eg a child causes harm to another child by pushing them off a wall. When questioned they denied pushing the child and said “I don’t know what happened, Miss. I must have….” thereby trying to disassociate themselves from what they’d done. IMO, Mayo did the same - claimed she didn’t remember, lied, tried to distance herself, etc. These were signs of denying guilt not psychosis.

I thought the criticism was of a doctor? A doctor who formed an opinion of her when she was taken to hospital? There would have been more than one psychiatrist giving evidence anyway even it was a psychiatrist.

While she might have had pregnancy denial at the beginning, she realised that she was pregnant before the birth. I don’t know what other red flags you mean.

This is what I mean. A break from reality, I can understand. You don't have control over your actions. Granted, i don't personally think that's what happened here.

Anyone using parents being unhappy and stressed as a mitigation perplex me.

Rape has a specific meaning and we have nothing suggesting that's what happened. Mayo didn't say she was raped or felt that way. We don't need to grasp at straws on every count, it's too much.

Secondly, Pp implied that this was the natural consequence of getting pregnant at this age. I can tell you it's not. Many of us have been there and almost every single teen girl who's pregnant feels desperate, embarrassed or deeply ashamed. From my own upbringing, being pregnant as a teenager was seen as worse than having a criminal record, seriously bad and immoral. Yet, cases like this are so rare. Its the idea that that is just what happens. It's not.

Considering teen/unwanted pregnancy is hardly uncommon and a lot of pregnant teens don't have happy home lives, why do they not all resort to violent murder?

What do her supporters think the difference between this girl and every other girl who has found themselves in the same situation and not chosen to violently murder their children?

That's what she's saying. She's hardly shown herself to be an honest person.

She conceived at 14.5, to a boy who pressured her to do without a condom.

It's not violent but it's not consensual either.

We don't know if she was raped first of all
We know that she was sexually active from thirteen which demonstrates that she wasn't properly supervised or cared for. She wasn't old enough to give consent at 13, 14 or 15.
Not wanting to tel your parents is not an adequate reason for doing this.
If you are calm and rational, you might make all the right decisions. If you're a child who has already made unhelpful decisions and tried to hide from the consequences, your head might be completely fucked. 'Adequate reason' wouldn't apply.

I really think you’re giving this too much headspace. It’s just a figure of speech

It's a phrase that has connotations of it's all the female's fault if she gets pregnant. Like there's no actual sperm involved.

Fall pregnant is a perfectly valid phrase. 'I fell pregnant with Oliver after 7 months of trying'. People use it to describe themselves.

If I don't like it, fine, but the judge is using a normal phrase.

In this case, fall pregnant is used to hint at it being an unfortunate outcome. Which is perfectly reasonable given the circumstances. It would be risky.

Woah there. We don't know if she was raped first of all. It was reported as a 'boy' and it's not clear whether the situation would be coercive control (rape).

And the birth certainly didn't "result" in death - she intentionally killed him. I don't think anyone doubts that whatsoever.

The coroner is an expert and they know better than anyone here. If this was any other case, nobody would be arguing with their conclusions.

Not wanting to tel your parents is not an adequate reason for doing this. You can feel sorry, but the idea that this is the normal route teenage girls go down is just a load of rubbish.

Of course she needs to be locked up. You can't let someone who violently murders a baby walk free, whether it's murder or infanticide!

I haven’t seen it in her defence despite her showing tons of red flags for psychosis. The judge certainly sharply criticised the un professionalism and overt bias of the psychiatrist the prosecution relied on. I think it could well be the basis for an appeal.

Hmm, it is confusing, but neonaticide is by definition that act of killing a newborn (first 24hrs). Infanticide is the act of killing a baby under 12months old. These are terms just for killing a victim of a certain age or relation, like homicide or filicide or patricide.

The crime called infanticide is different from the killing act of infanticide and has its own definition. Infanticide can result in either being convicted of murder or infanticide. The manner of killing doesn’t determine which crime you are convicted of…it’s all the facts. In other words passive doesn’t equate to the crime of infanticide while violent equates to the crime of murder.

It can be either passive or violent and still the crime of infanticide or murder.

As with so much else about this case, the manner of killing was consistent with a mother suffering from psychosis:
In instances of neonaticide, non-psychotic denial of pregnancy is most likely to result in passive death; the woman may become acutely confused and disorientated at the time of delivery, or panic after the birth and the infant may die from maternal negligence, through exposure. Psychotic denial is more likely to be associated with active killing, by means such as suffocation or strangulation.

As I said up thread I hate the saying, always have going back to the 60s but people do frequently use it and I don't think it is generally meant in a derogatory way even though it makes me cringe.

It is actually used quite often on this site so I assume many people see it as harmless.

I always thought the connotations were more that getting pregnant is a matter of accident, luck, like when you have a fall you can’t control when you fall.

But I can see the logic in “fallen woman” and the fall is meant as a bad, downwards drop in reputation and character.

No need to apologise. I’m getting people muddled up too. However, you seem to be somewhat contradicting yourself. Having said it’s not the manner in which someone kills which determines whether it’s infanticide or murder (I agree), you then say the way of killing is consistent with infanticide.

There was, surely, no evidence of psychosis? The judge was thorough in his comments and didn’t lack sympathy for Mayo, but he made no mention of psychosis. Moreover, I haven’t seen any evidence that that was her defence.

This oscillation between being aware of reality and then going back into a deluded state of denial is also part of psychotic pregnancy denial:

“Denial of pregnancy is most simply classified as psychotic or non-psychotic.1 Those with psychotic denial tend to be chronically mentally ill (e.g. schizophrenia, bipolar disorder) and remain psychotic throughout pregnancy. They may experience physical symptoms of pregnancy, but contribute these to other delusional causes. They may oscillate between open acknowledgement and emphatic denial of their pregnancy...”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3128877/

It is a common saying, I personally hate it as it smacks of "fallen woman" to me but regardless lots of people do refer to "falling pregnant."

Here's a link https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/fall_pregnant