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.

@Notmoresugar

I don't care about her age or background, the bottom line is partying for 6 days was far more important to her than her poor daughter being left frightened, starving and alone. I have no sympathy for her, she knew exactly what she was doing and made her utterly self-centered choice without even leaving her with food and water. The girl lacks the instinct of human kindness and there's no doubt her actions have been justified for it to be manslaughter and not murder.

This is a woefully ignorant post.

So sad for all involved. I know they can pick and choose photos, but the baby looks so unhappy in all the pictures

Why do people look for excuses and others to blame. She willingly left her baby alone to go to parties. Even if she thought someone else was meant to be there looking after the child she obviously didn't make any contact to find out how the child was or she would have gone home.

@OhToBeASeahorse This story breaks my heart 😓 how could anyone ever do that to a child?! 😓

To have her charged with murder they would have to be able to convince a jury that there was clear intent and motive to kill which is very hard to prove 😓 so charging her with manslaughter they’re FAR more likely to get a conviction. If they charged her with murder I’m positive she would walk away with no conviction!

Probably because the mother didn't intend for her dc to die. She is very young too. Maybe she has a learning disability or similar? Very troubled background?

It shocking that the staff at the mother and baby unit didn't once check on the baby and mother in six days.

@mummylovesthesunshine

Probably because the mother didn't intend for her dc to die. She is very young too. Maybe she has a learning disability or similar? Very troubled background?

It shocking that the staff at the mother and baby unit didn't once check on the baby and mother in six days.

It's tricky, isn't it.

The thing is, pretty much anyone who kills - whether female or male, whether it's their own child or a random, has something seriously lacking in their makeup somewhere. In very many cases, we could, collectively, have done more to change their direction.

But the modern way seems to be to cut services to the bone, and then demonise the offender when something like this happens. It's far to easy to dismiss people as nutters and psychopaths - and place their actions completely outside our control - than to try to understand what has happened. This is of course not the same thing as excusing their criminal act.

@BernadetteRostankowskiWolowitz

You don't surprise me - she'll have lots of sympathizers like you that will justify and excuse her disgusting actions.

@DartmoorChef

Why do people look for excuses and others to blame. She willingly left her baby alone to go to parties. Even if she thought someone else was meant to be there looking after the child she obviously didn't make any contact to find out how the child was or she would have gone home.

How do you know she left willingly?

And even if she did, the baby was on a CP plan yet had no social worker.

Even if it turns out the mother was pure evil (which going by the background isn’t going to be the case) the baby was let down by the services who should have been involved in keeping her safe and weren’t.

If she didn't intend to be away for 6days, what the hell was she then caught up in that she was unable to phone for help for herself/her daughter?

"celebrating her birthday" may have been the purported premise on which she left the baby initially even if she was groomed / being trafficked.

remember this is a Daily Mail article.................

@diddl

But surely deciding to leave a toddler for 6 days (without food & water?) is taking a deliberate action?

And you'd have to be extremely stupid to think that there might not be a possibility of death!

A certainty. Even an adult can usually only survive 3 days without water. It absolutely is an intentional killing as the action taken could have no other outcome than death. A slow and painful and terrifying death. That poor, poor child.

I hope they never release this woman.

I cried when I read the story and the thought of a toddler starving to death is heartbreaking.
But I do feel incredibly sad for the mother, who whilst living in "supported" accomodation, appears not to have had the support a lone young teenager would need to raise a child.

But surely deciding to leave a toddler for 6 days (without food & water?) is taking a deliberate action?

Where does the article say she left without leaving food and water? I don't think it does. She may indeed have left it but the child may have been too young to manage to drink enough or eat enough.

Not that this excuses her actions of course. But making 'facts' up isn't helpful.

Even if it turns out the mother was pure evil (which going by the background isn’t going to be the case) the baby was let down by the services who should have been involved in keeping her safe and weren’t.

I think you'll find that those services have, in turn, been let down by the government that has cut their funding to the bone for ideological purposes.

Social services aren't super-people. There is only so much that can be done with the available time and resources, and things will inevitably fall through the gaps. A(nother) witch hunt against social workers will do more harm than good.

@MotherWol

There's a lot that we don't know about the case - it appears she lived with her mother, the child's grandmother, so possibly she didn't leave her alone. She lived in supported accommodation, but safeguarding checks don't seem to have been done.

It's clearly a very upsetting case, and the child's death is a tragedy, but without knowing the full facts of the case we shouldn't rush to judgement.

No, it's bad grammar in the article. 'She' refers to the baby, ' her mother' refers to the 18yr old.

I misread it too, at first.

@thedancingbear

Even if it turns out the mother was pure evil (which going by the background isn’t going to be the case) the baby was let down by the services who should have been involved in keeping her safe and weren’t.

I think you'll find that those services have, in turn, been let down by the government that has cut their funding to the bone for ideological purposes.

Social services aren't super-people. There is only so much that can be done with the available time and resources, and things will inevitably fall through the gaps. A(nother) witch hunt against social workers will do more harm than good.

Agreed on the cuts. As I said earlier on the thread. The decimation of services has impacted on situations like this massively.

It can’t just be ignored because it’s unfair on the individuals involved though. It needs discussed. Loudly.

[quote VeniVidiWeeWee]@Bluntness100

"The difference is the intent to kill. Manslaughter is you killed but didn’t intend it, murder is you intended it."

@Thatwentbadly

"In the legal definition of murder means the prosecution have to prove to beyond reasonable doubt that the mother intended to kill her child."

There's a lot of legal misunderstanding here. You do not have to prove an intention to kill, merely an intention to cause GBH. Also, murder may be committed by an omission.[/quote]
In both situations they need intention.

If the YMCA was a medium support facility for mother’s and babies, with onsite people at the entrance, how wasn’t it noticed that the baby was left alone.

It can’t just be ignored because it’s unfair on the individuals involved though. It needs discussed. Loudly.

I agree. But the conversation should not be 'heads should roll, they have blood on their hands' etc, but 'how can we get to a place where social services can effectively support these people'.

Sadly, I think we both know which of these two it will be.

Another innocent child failed by the system.
YMCA building. Did no one at all here that poor baby in distress. Did no one notice the mother not being around. As previously stated this was after all "supported housing"
Also its one thing to put a CCP in place, but its about as much us a chocolate tea pot in the desert if its not actually put into practice.
All that though is not me taking anything away from what the mother did.

There was a Facebook post by Sussex police in 2016 when she went missing from Brighton.

Then again missing from London in 2017.

The YouTube post by her sister said she was running away often and they didn't know the baby's cause of death at the point she was charged.

I've visited these supported accommodation places. They are very variable! Staffed can mean 24/7 on site (but usually a sleeping shift at night) or just a staff member popping into the office every few days.

Staff don't routinely go into the self contained flats. It is odd that none of the other residents heard the baby.

I don't even know how the local authority can justify having a child on a child protection plan but not having an assigned worker??

Their serious case review should be interesting. It will give recommendations and we need to push government and local authorities to follow these.

I just had a video of her sister speaking about her at 14 it’s on YouTube if anyone’s interested it was posted in October when she was first charged I haven’t listen to it all yet but it does sound very much like she was being trafficked from a young age... rip Asiah

@FortunesFave

YMCA DownsLink was handed a three-year contract worth £336,000 by Brighton council to run the accommodation, starting on Sunday 1 September 2019, Brighton and Hove News reported.

The contact offered a 'medium' level of support for families, with all flats self-contained with their own kitchen, space for staff on duty, and a communal area for group activities.

Yes and apparently someone monitoring the door/ reception 24/7. So they saw her leave, and not come back for days, and didn't think that the sound of a distressed child screaming in her apartment warranted intervention?

@thedancingbear

It can’t just be ignored because it’s unfair on the individuals involved though. It needs discussed. Loudly.

I agree. But the conversation should not be 'heads should roll, they have blood on their hands' etc, but 'how can we get to a place where social services can effectively support these people'.

Sadly, I think we both know which of these two it will be.

Until we know what happened we don’t know what the conversation needs to be.

Ultimately funding will be involved somewhere, but a baby on a CP plan not having a social worker may also be a fuck up somewhere as well

[quote Notmoresugar]@BernadetteRostankowskiWolowitz

You don't surprise me - she'll have lots of sympathizers like you that will justify and excuse her disgusting actions.[/quote]
I am not sympathising. Far from it. What she did was horrific.

But it is woefully ignorant to say "I wont factor in her age or upbringing in this". Those two areas will have contributed to this. Even if in a very small way.

Theres every possibility that she is, mainly, an evil person. But you cannot ignore the other factors.