How is this not murder?(upsetting)

[OhToBeASeahorse]

A mother has appeared in court today charged with the manslaughter of her toddler.

She left her, alone, for 6 days.

How can this not be murder? I don't understand.

*lived there

@TJ17

I hope she gets what's coming to her in prison and doesn't leave unless in a body bag.

I'm not normally into barbaric punishment but I honestly wish someone would leave her locked up for 6 days with no food or water.

Got a pitchfork collection too I bet.

@OhToBeASeahorse

I'm not familiar with the case but the difference between murder and manslaughter depends on whether something is premeditated. In this case I'm assuming her legal team has proved mitigation of some kind eg diminished responsibility such as psychosis.

It's tragic, but it sounds like the mother has had a pretty bad start in life, this is not an excuse but might explain the lesser charge. Poor baby though.

I agree. For people looking for "explanations", I think some answers at a societal level may be illinated by examining how much of this thread has been dedicated to sympathy for/ defence of the killer, rather than horror at what happened to the poor baby

It’s possible to feel both horror for the child and empathy for her mum. If we don’t seek to understand what happened here both in how she came to leave her baby and the wider circumstances of her life experience that brought her to that point nothing will change, that’s the whole point of the SCR that will be carried out.

@OhToBeASeahorse

But she was in a mother and baby home - how can no one have been aware

It's not a mother and baby home. It's semi supported accommodation for young parents. Not staffed 24/7.

@JustLyra

I was a child treated with a similar level of contempt. I was lucky that I survived, unlike this poor baby. So no, I have zero sympathy for the mother, only for the innocent baby who was killed in an horrific and painful and terrifying way.

@MagentaZebras I was also treated similarly as a child and was lucky I survived.

I do have sympathy for the mother (and funnily enough it is possible to have sympathy for her whilst having sympathy for the poor baby as well). I was lucky, people banged doors, yelled and fought to get me the help I needed once I was rescued.

Having seen my eldest sibling go in the opposite direction I can see that luck, timing, people on my side and many other factors got me to where I am today.

People will come out of situations with different opinions and I have sympathy for them both because they were both massively let down.

Yes. I accept we can have different points of view and that is what it is. But I think my position of having zero sympathy for abusers (even young ones who had difficult childhoods) is reasonable. Particularly child killers. People always have a choice.

@LookingGlassMilk

I don't understand how this could happen in a mother and baby unit. Are they not staffed? How could nobody notice?

Are mothers just left to their own devices in them? I thought the whole point of them was to offer support and supervision to mothers who are not capable of looking after a child on their own.

Some of the attacks on the mother here are a bit out of order. I seriously doubt she is evil. She is very young, from a difficult background and wasn't capable of caring for a child.

It's not a mother and baby home

@MazekeenSmith but how did no one ever hear the baby in distress? Staff or other women that lived there?!

@HoppingPavlova

This is why kids shouldn’t have kids.

This isn't a fair statement at all as there are plenty of teenage mothers who step up to the plate as good parents!!!!!

How many other teenage parents have you heard of doing this? This person is disgusting and barbaric and clearly mentally deranged. It has nothing to do with her age!! She won't get to 30 and just suddenly be an upstanding citizen and amazing mother

@FortunesFave

She was housed by the YMCA in a sort of complex for vulnerable young people. Why did nobody SEE or report this??

It's low support. There must have been no evidence before this that she posed this kind of risk to the baby. Sometimes parents do seriously harm or kill their children with no prior warning.

@IrmaFayLear

That poor child.

I don’t understand the “empathy” for the child’s mother. An attempt to understand what went on, yes, but empathy for her - no. Where were the grandparents? Apparently the grandmother had been living at the accommodation, and the girl’s father was present in court, and she waved at him.

Walking out of that flat, closing the door and not going back is incomprehensible. She could have phoned someone - not necessarily the police. Those talking about coercion - piffle. She walked out alone and returned alone.

Social services may be underfunded, but a) there was no social services involvement and b) it’s not a reasonable excuse for the mother. If I walked out on my dcs and came back a week later, whose fault would it be?

I agree entirely.

@Fembot123 what's a pitchfork collection?

Yes. I accept we can have different points of view and that is what it is. But I think my position of having zero sympathy for abusers (even young ones who had difficult childhoods) is reasonable. Particularly child killers. People always have a choice.

Everyone thinks their own opinion is reasonable. We wouldn’t hold them otherwise.

I just think the minimisation of “difficult childhood” and labelling as a child killer with the assumption that it was an active and deliberate choice to kill her child does everyone involved a disservice because there is no way this case is that black and white in my opinion.

@TJ17

I hope she gets what's coming to her in prison and doesn't leave unless in a body bag.

I'm not normally into barbaric punishment but I honestly wish someone would leave her locked up for 6 days with no food or water.

Jesus fucking christ.

So many people have posted that she was on a child protection plan yet didn't have a social worker. This is WRONG. The article says the child did not have a child protection plan. There is no way she wouldn't have had a social worker if she was on a plan.

Sometimes parents kill their children without prior warning. It happens. In those cases the only person to blame is the parent. This is a tragedy but it is not the fault of the YMCA, social workers or anyone else. Who knows what was going on in this woman's mind - it's unfathomable if she doesn't have a significant learning disability or mental health condition that caused her not to understand what the consequences were and that seems unlikely if the baby wasn't open to social services.

One of the telling factors to come out yet is where they lived before this unit.

The baby was 20 months. They’d lived there for only 11 weeks.

[quote OhToBeASeahorse]@MazekeenSmith but how did no one ever hear the baby in distress? Staff or other women that lived there?![/quote]
Who knows?
Staff only visit at certain times, they may not have visited until after the poor baby had died. There may not have been many or any other families living there. She may have been too weak to cry. The inquest will explore all this but it isn't anyone else's fault.

It is frankly astonishing that on this thread there are so many falling over themselves to excuse the mother. Grasping at anything - that she couldn’t make a phone call, she was a victim of trafficking, underfunding of social services etc etc.

This was not neglect through negligence or inexperience or foolishness. This was a decision that girl took.

It’s a scary world where some people will leap to not just defend but actively advocate for someone who has perpetrated a terrible crime.

So tragic. From the pictures someone loved the child enough to dress her well, put pretty bobbles in her hair, there’s a first birthday helium balloon in one picture. So there must have been some people around in the child’s life.

@MazekeenSmith

So many people have posted that she was on a child protection plan yet didn't have a social worker. This is WRONG. The article says the child did not have a child protection plan. There is no way she wouldn't have had a social worker if she was on a plan.

Sometimes parents kill their children without prior warning. It happens. In those cases the only person to blame is the parent. This is a tragedy but it is not the fault of the YMCA, social workers or anyone else. Who knows what was going on in this woman's mind - it's unfathomable if she doesn't have a significant learning disability or mental health condition that caused her not to understand what the consequences were and that seems unlikely if the baby wasn't open to social services.

The article did say earlier that she was on a CP plan.

It’s been edited. Same as the bit about living with her mother - that’s clearer now that they are talking about the baby whereas it very much read as if the grandmother lived there earlier.

@JustLyra

Yes. I accept we can have different points of view and that is what it is. But I think my position of having zero sympathy for abusers (even young ones who had difficult childhoods) is reasonable. Particularly child killers. People always have a choice.

Everyone thinks their own opinion is reasonable. We wouldn’t hold them otherwise.

I just think the minimisation of “difficult childhood” and labelling as a child killer with the assumption that it was an active and deliberate choice to kill her child does everyone involved a disservice because there is no way this case is that black and white in my opinion.

I am not minimising the experience of a difficult childhood. I have lived it and its effects never go away. What I have said is that this does not provide an "explanation" for abusive behaviour.

Referring to this woman as a "child killer" is simply a statement of fact. She killed a child. Her own child. Nothing about her life prior to that week can ever make this "understandable".

@IrmaFayLear

It is frankly astonishing that on this thread there are so many falling over themselves to excuse the mother. Grasping at anything - that she couldn’t make a phone call, she was a victim of trafficking, underfunding of social services etc etc.

This was not neglect through negligence or inexperience or foolishness. This was a decision that girl took.

It’s a scary world where some people will leap to not just defend but actively advocate for someone who has perpetrated a terrible crime.

Thank you for putting this so eloquently.

I am not minimising the experience of a difficult childhood. I have lived it and its effects never go away. What I have said is that this does not provide an "explanation" for abusive behaviour.

Again, we disagree. It does not excuse it, but it may very well explain it.

I don’t think that’s eloquent at all.