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.

@ZoeCM

I didn’t say it was inaccurate, I said labelling her as a child killer with the assumption it was an active and deliberate choice to kill her child...

Reading people’s whole sentences, rather that selectively quoting, before jumping on them helps.

But of course she made a deliberate and active choice to kill her child! Unless she had severe learning disabilities (which would have been brought up by her defence lawyer) she would understand that if you leave a baby alone for days without food, it will die. She was partying for days, surrounded by people - even in the unlikely event that she was being kept at the parties by force, I very much doubt she couldn't tell someone "there's a baby alone at [her address], she needs someone to feed her, please get help."

I'd say it was just a plea hearing. The judge said that she would have a medical review submitted before the sentencing hearing. It's possible the defence couldn't mention things if there was no evidence. The judge requested all social care reports relating to her.

it is horrible to read and disgusting to think that someone could do that to anyone, let alone a toddler, but not all teen mums are so irresponsible and i think saying 'this is why kids shouldn't have kids' is another way of saying all teen mums are neglectful!!

@Fembot123

So sorry *@MagentaZebras*, life is so unfair sometimes.

I look at my wonderful, imaginative, funny, confident, secure, cuddly, crazy children now and feel so happy. But it is bittersweet because I wonder if I might have been a child like that, in different circumstances.

I think everybody talking about the mother here has massively missed the point.

curious as to what you think the "maybe not" scenario is @colouringindoors? I can't imagine it in this case.

@ZoeCM

I didn’t say it was inaccurate, I said labelling her as a child killer with the assumption it was an active and deliberate choice to kill her child...

Reading people’s whole sentences, rather that selectively quoting, before jumping on them helps.

But of course she made a deliberate and active choice to kill her child! Unless she had severe learning disabilities (which would have been brought up by her defence lawyer) she would understand that if you leave a baby alone for days without food, it will die. She was partying for days, surrounded by people - even in the unlikely event that she was being kept at the parties by force, I very much doubt she couldn't tell someone "there's a baby alone at [her address], she needs someone to feed her, please get help."

We have no idea if it was a deliberate and active choice to kill the child or not. If there was clear and concrete proof she got up that day and decided she was going to deliberately kill her child by starvation then she’d be up for murder.

She’s not. So, there are clearly other factors involved that we’re not yet privy to.

You’re assuming it was and that there are no external factors involved. I’m considering that it wasn’t and there were.

I think it is possible to:

-immense sympathy for the victims
-revulsion at the criminals
-sorrow at the fact that the criminals have turned out how they have

and at the same time want to understand the underlying causation for what they did (again -for the hard of thinking - this is not to excuse them). This would be with a view to, hopefully, stopping others turning out the same way. I do happen to think that, sometimes, the answer will simply be 'they were evil' but humans are usually more complex than that.

None of these contradict any of the others.

Unfortunately these not particularly complicated ideas are beyond some people's critical thinking powers, which is why you always get a handful of nitwits, frothing at the mouth and accusing anyone attempting any kind of analysis of excusing the criminal.

And yes, all of the above equally applies to rapists, child abusers, you name it

But the fact is that that doesn't tend to happen on MN when it comes to abusive men. Women in abusive relationships almost always get advised to leave, not to try to understand their partners and support them to change their behaviour. I've read threads about Ian Brady and John Worboys, and the sympathy was definitely aimed at the victims, not the perpetrators. I'm usually the least "what about teh menz?" person in the world, but I find the double standards on MN regarding this issue utterly bizarre. I think some people just don't want to admit that some mothers don't care about their children and may actively want to harm them.

I think everybody talking about the mother here has massively missed the point.

...or are simply capable of discussing the mother and the situation as well as having total sympathy for the baby and feeling that she was badly failed by many people.

Oh FFS. An adult human can survive 3 days without water. Most people from countries where they never get to go to school at all could tell you this. It is obvious to ANYBODY who isn't clinically insane or has massive learning disabilities (to the extent that they'd never have been left to care for a child without supervision in the first place) that leaving a toddler for SIX days with no food or water sitting in a nappy full of poo would inevitably lead to their death from degydration/ starvation/ disease (in that order of likelihood of onset). Nobody needs advanced science to know this. Stop defending this - please.

Can’t you just accept that people are entitled to their thoughts and opinions as much as you are?

Chicchicchicchiclana

I don't know.

But I'd like for us as a society to understand the whole picture in the hope that we can avoid such tragedies in the future.

I'd say it was just a plea hearing. The judge said that she would have a medical review submitted before the sentencing hearing. It's possible the defence couldn't mention things if there was no evidence. The judge requested all social care reports relating to her.

If the medical review showed that she had such extreme learning disabilities, I doubt she would have been convicted of manslaughter. Her learning disabilities would have to be very, very severe in order for her not to understand that the baby would starve - even small children understand that humans need food to live. It would mean she had the cognitive ability of a toddler herself. If that were the case, I doubt she would survived to her teens without walking out in front of a car and being killed, to be frank.

@colouringindoors

Chicchicchicchiclana

I don't know.

But I'd like for us as a society to understand the whole picture in the hope that we can avoid such tragedies in the future.

My sentiments exactly.

I think it’s fair to say anyone with an ounce of humanity is going to find this case deeply upsetting. There’s something especially about that age which really gets me. 20 months, they’re old enough to have separation anxiety, but not yet verbal. Old enough to worry. And 6 whole days... it breaks my heart to imagine what that poor child was feeling.

I was also initially angry that it wasn’t murder, but can see that manslaughter is a safer bet in terms of prosecution. The maximum sentence for manslaughter (according to google, so those with legal expertise may correct me) is still life imprisonment.

However, I also that while think the mother’s actions were abhorrent, the fact she ran away at 14, never to be seen again by her family, went to several “parties” and was then offering herself in a modelling competition after her daughter’s death; it all suggests there’s something else going on. The judge requesting medical, psychological and social work reports also seems to confirm this. In due course, the serious case review will also study this as she herself would have been under the safeguarding board at some point. This in no way excuses the most awful thing she has done - but might be helpful to learn from.

Surprised she didn’t have a Family Nurse Partnership - pretty common for under 19s and especially given her housing problems, lack of family contact and clearly troubled teenage years.

That the supported housing provider didn’t notice/enquire about her or the baby’s whereabouts across the 6 days is shocking. They have a lot of questions to answer, although it is in some horrific way commendable that they checked the cctv and admitted she’d left 6 days prior. I wonder if she’d told them a lie about taking Asiah with her?

@JustLyra

Can’t you just accept that people are entitled to their thoughts and opinions as much as you are?

I believe that I stated that explicitly already in a direct response to you, so yes I can. That does not mean that I can't express the counterpoint to opinions that I believe are illogical or inconsistent.

Hmm. As a 23 year old, her tweets used to pop up on my timeline as we had a few mutuals. I think her posts were generally faux-happy - something felt a bit “off” about her. It’s hard to explain, when you grow up with social media, you just spot when something seems phoney/weird.

Plenty of people pretend they’re happy on social media when they’re going through difficult things in reality btw, that’s not a good indication.

*
But this was after her baby died. She also entered a PLT giveaway.

I'm normal circumstances this makes sense but why would you pretend to be happy after your child has died- at your own hands at that?

It would make more sense if she pretended to grieve. Which is why I don't buy the "she was sad on the inside" explanation.

Some people are just cold.

We have no idea if it was a deliberate and active choice to kill the child or not. If there was clear and concrete proof she got up that day and decided she was going to deliberately kill her child by starvation then she’d be up for murder.

She’s not. So, there are clearly other factors involved that we’re not yet privy to.

You’re assuming it was and that there are no external factors involved. I’m considering that it wasn’t and there were.

People were explaining earlier in the thread that killing someone by neglect is classed as manslaughter, not murder, in England and Wales. It's a technicality. It doesn't mean she didn't leave the baby to die.

What external factors could there possibly be?

@ZoeCM

We have no idea if it was a deliberate and active choice to kill the child or not. If there was clear and concrete proof she got up that day and decided she was going to deliberately kill her child by starvation then she’d be up for murder.

She’s not. So, there are clearly other factors involved that we’re not yet privy to.

You’re assuming it was and that there are no external factors involved. I’m considering that it wasn’t and there were.

People were explaining earlier in the thread that killing someone by neglect is classed as manslaughter, not murder, in England and Wales. It's a technicality. It doesn't mean she didn't leave the baby to die.

What external factors could there possibly be?

The whole thread has been discussing them so there’s surely no need to specifically rehash them here?

However, the particular one I will highlight is that it was, it appears, known on social media that the child had been left at home. She wouldn’t be the first to assume someone would step in(especially if they had done so before).

That’s before you get on to the oddity of someone with a low income somehow apparently affording to move round the country at ease and going to parties hundreds of miles apart on consecutive days. Given her vulnerable background there are questions there.

The summing up, sentencing and reports will answer more questions.

I think it will come out that the child died before she left the house and partied for the 6 days. She decided to live life carefree doing what she wanted, before coming back and facing consequences.

Women in abusive relationships almost always get advised to leave,

They’re advised to leave to protect themselves and any children, there are however perpetrator programmes to support and help perpetrators recover and change. We remove children ultimately from abusive homes for their safety, but there are programmes that work with abusive parents. Ian Brady received extensive psychiatric treatment.

Holding people responsible for their behaviour isn’t incompatible with recognising there will be contributing factors to consider. She will be held responsible for her behaviour by the courts, the SCR will look at contributing factors including agency failures.

It’s possible to deplore her actions while acknowledging there are other issues which contributed to what happened.

However, the particular one I will highlight is that it was, it appears, known on social media that the child had been left at home. She wouldn’t be the first to assume someone would step in(especially if they had done so before).

Six days? For six days, she just assumed that some random person would go to her house and feed her baby? And it never occurred to her to ask someone to do this? I'm sorry, this is too much of a stretch.

@ZoeCM

However, the particular one I will highlight is that it was, it appears, known on social media that the child had been left at home. She wouldn’t be the first to assume someone would step in(especially if they had done so before).

Six days? For six days, she just assumed that some random person would go to her house and feed her baby? And it never occurred to her to ask someone to do this? I'm sorry, this is too much of a stretch.

It’s only too much of a stretch if you’ve never known anyone who would do that.

@Jellycatspyjamas

Women in abusive relationships almost always get advised to leave,

They’re advised to leave to protect themselves and any children, there are however perpetrator programmes to support and help perpetrators recover and change. We remove children ultimately from abusive homes for their safety, but there are programmes that work with abusive parents. Ian Brady received extensive psychiatric treatment.

Holding people responsible for their behaviour isn’t incompatible with recognising there will be contributing factors to consider. She will be held responsible for her behaviour by the courts, the SCR will look at contributing factors including agency failures.

It’s possible to deplore her actions while acknowledging there are other issues which contributed to what happened.

Ok, so are you saying that there ade any circumstances ever - with some training courses or whatever - that you believe it could even conceivably be a possiblity to be appropriate to leave a child, any child, in this woman's care ever again? Even for 30 mins? In 20 years or whatever? However "reformed" she might appear to a parole board. Because if so, I think there is something massively wrong.

However, the particular one I will highlight is that it was, it appears, known on social media that the child had been left at home. She wouldn’t be the first to assume someone would step in(especially if they had done so before).

She would'n be the first to assume someone will step in? Is it a done thing? To fuck off to party for days and to assume someone will come to take care fo your child and clean up your mess?

Bloody hell.

It’s only too much of a stretch if you’ve never known anyone who would do that.

This is the normalising of severe abuse that many of us on this thread are finding repulsive. I don't care how many people you've met that would do that. They are all disgusting people and should never be anywhere near children. There being a lot of them does NOT make it ok.

@ChardonnaysPetDragon

However, the particular one I will highlight is that it was, it appears, known on social media that the child had been left at home. She wouldn’t be the first to assume someone would step in(especially if they had done so before).

She would'n be the first to assume someone will step in? Is it a done thing? To fuck off to party for days and to assume someone will come to take care fo your child and clean up your mess?

Bloody hell.

Why did nobody say? I could just have gone on holiday on my own and some random person would apparently take care of children for free until I get back!!