Nine years for starving a baby to death

[PropertyFlipper]

I’m struggling to see the justice here. This sorry specimen will be out in five years no doubt. Devastating.
Teen mother, 19, bursts into tears as she is jailed for nine years

In addition to starving, I can’t stop thinking about how scared the little tot must’ve been to be left alone wandering around the house all through the night, 5 nights in a row.

There is also a paedophile in the news with a short sentence. Very disturbing 😡

So we know she'd asked her family to look after the girl so she could go out her to celebrate her 18th birthday and they'd refused. We know she'd left the girl alone 11 times previously. & we know she'd told her friends her mum was looking after her.

So my guess is that she'd previously told her family "you need to look after her, I'm going out whether you do or not" and therefore they did. However this time when she said the same thing they'd had enough and told her they wouldn't (perhaps because she's an adult now) but she didn't believe them and went out anyway.

@AllAroundTheWorldYeah

So we know she'd asked her family to look after the girl so she could go out her to celebrate her 18th birthday and they'd refused. We know she'd left the girl alone 11 times previously. & we know she'd told her friends her mum was looking after her.

So my guess is that she'd previously told her family "you need to look after her, I'm going out whether you do or not" and therefore they did. However this time when she said the same thing they'd had enough and told her they wouldn't (perhaps because she's an adult now) but she didn't believe them and went out anyway.

I read that on here back in March too.

@GreatAuntEmily

It also suits many people to write things off as “they were evil, nothing could have been done” as it absolves everyone else of anything they could, and in some cases should, have done.

People have their human rights.
She has human rights. She can have as many children as she wants unless she is mentally ill and can be sectioned then some things could be decided for her as being in her best interests.
I really don't think fairy godmothers exist to magic up happy endings - sadly.

No-one has said there is a fairy godmother.

Properly funding social services, education, intervention services, supported living places, care leavers, the likes of CAHMS and access to decent counselling for sexual abuse survivors won’t save every single child, but it’ll save a lot.

Pretending that evilness is the only cause of this means the continual underfunding can be ignored and therefore politicians, voters and budget organisers can continually pretend there is no part played by anyone else in these situations.

It might be easier for people to think the answer is simply that she was evil. Life isn’t that simple, and pretending it is helps nobody.

@User57327259

If the mother was in care the question should then be what did she learn in care? Was she abandoned for days or left without food. It looks like she reached a certain and was sent out into the world with little idea of how to handle life

Whilst the vast majority of foster carers are truly empathetic, caring, amazing people (you have my eternal gratitude), unfortunately there are many purely in it for the money (a member of my immediate family went through foster care, and was pregnant at 15). Open rebellious behaviour is very common.

Being in the care system doesn't mean you have a mental health problem either. My family member came out at 16 with zero support given, and the experience has emotionally broken her. She does talk fondly about a long-term placement. There is a lot of constant moving around.

This woman was fully aware of her actions and five years (good behaviour) is scant punishment.

Social Services can fuck right off too, I've nothing but contempt for them.

That's upto if that's what you think . In my friends report it was reported that the children were wearing odd socks. Why even mention that unless 'looking' for things. Instead of wasting time on crap like that they could have been looking out for a child that needed them.

Saddest thing I read, was, they say it was unlikely the baby would have cried, if at all, as she knew from previous history, that it wouldn't create attention. Ss knew them, as they had found her an assisted living flat. How sad, that if the baby had cried it was possible it could have saved her.
She needed a cuddle and love, so bloody sad. The mothers age is no excuse.

Touch, that’s exactly what I thought. It’s a really bizarre situation - I’ve heard of people leaving babies for the evening (not good either, but survivable if the house doesn’t burn down and they don’t get ill). This was extraordinary. Nearly a week on her own, poor mite. There’s going to be some major psychiatric issue there.

I can't understand what supported housing is? Surely there must be someone working there who noticed they hadn't seen the mother for a while and done a bit of checking up? Or I'd assume a member of staff routinely checked on the tenants in supported housing, even just a knock on the door each day to say hi and check everything is OK. Where is the 'support'?

It's so horrendous. I was listening to the news report on the radio whilst I was driving home with my 13 year old ds. Even he said, what did she think would happen?...you can't pause your baby for a week while you party. What was she thinking? I struggle to imagine she is NT.

@awaynboilyurheid

Sex trafficking? she got a shout out for her birthday from a DJ in a nightclub, she wasn’t held hostage.

Exactly. Don’t know why people are falling over themselves to make excuses for her.

The mother is nothing but a monster, but all the ' do gooders' will still say it was because of this or that. Flame away, but that poor child was very badly let down by so many people.
It is utterly heartbreaking. :(

@HeraInTheHereAndNow

Poor, poor wee thing. How does this KEEP happening? What the fuck are Social Services doing?

Looking after the many other DC that were more at risk that day.

Didn’t her friends who she was partying with ask her who was looking after the baby? I assume she lied. It’s just astonishing.

@LakieLady

If you want high quality, effective, timely safeguarding you have to fund it

Absolutely. But for 4 elections in a row, the majority of voters have supported the party of cuts, instead of the party that is prepared to invest in quality services.

This is the real crime. People have voted, time and again, for cuts to local authorities over the last decade. And then they cry crocodile tears and express outrage at the latest failure to safeguard children or other vulnerable people. What the fuck did they think was going to happen when funding for social work and support for vulnerable people was slashed? They just didn't give a shit.

This case is heartbreaking.... that poor little child. The judge sentenced the mother in full knowledge of the circumstances (knowledge which we do not have), so I'm not going to question the sentence, but it's heartbreaking that so many vulnerable people are failed by today's society.

This girl may have not had the capacity to understand the effect of her actions, which would explain a manslaughter verdict - but that's all the more reason why she shouldn't have been caring for a child. And having the dad around would not have helped this baby - he was more than likely a child rapist.

@Puzzledandpissedoff - thank you

It's impossible to judge without knowing the ins and outs of this case and the things that led to the crime. I would imagine that the judge considered all the available evidence carefully before they came to their conclusion.

@pollylocketpickedapocket I mentioned the sex trafficking. I said I'd read it was a possibility not that it was true. No one actually knows what happened.

@Lockheart

I suspect the biological father was unaware of the child's existence. My heart weeps.

Odds are the biological father was her rapist.

Thats exactly what I was thinking. She was sexually exploited from the age of 14.

They were both badly let down.

It’s utterly heartbreaking. But sadly people will always look to blame everyone else other than the actual murderer. Ultimately it’s down to the person carrying out the abuse and neglect. Social services, family, police can be involved in monitoring the situation, maybe for a few hours a week, but it’s what happens when that person is alone with their child when the abuse will obviously take place. She was so cold and callous that she posted tickets to sell on a site within hours of her child’s death, and within days boasted she had applied to be a model for a clothing brand. No remorse. Just getting on with life as normal. Vile individual.

LakieLady

If you want high quality, effective, timely safeguarding you have to fund it

*Absolutely. But for 4 elections in a row, the majority of voters have supported the party of cuts, instead of the party that is prepared to invest in quality services.

This is the real crime. People have voted, time and again, for cuts to local authorities over the last decade. And then they cry crocodile tears and express outrage at the latest failure to safeguard children or other vulnerable people. What the fuck did they think was going to happen when funding for social work and support for vulnerable people was slashed? They just didn't give a shit.*

@BeenAsFarAsMercyAndGrand indeed.
Isn't the truth that we're all responsible. We want to live in a society where this doesn't happen, we need to stop voting in the tories.
And what have the rest of us done about the situation? I know I've done nothing, no petitions, no protests, nothing. It doesn't affect me so I allow myself to do nothing about it. And then this happens.

@JustLyra

Pretending that there’s no backstory, that a victim of sexual abuse who was a runaway child was so unaffected that the only option was that she was evil, to cases like this does absolutely nothing to help children in danger from circumstances like this.

It simply allows people to get outraged only at the mother and ignore the multiple issues that leads to situations like this.

There are countless obvious questions in this case and that’s without even the judges full judgement or the serious case review. But easier for folks to pretend it’s just about evilness and that’s that.

No wonder things have hardly changed since I was a child and the systematic underfunding of crucial services has been supported.

One hundred fucking percent.

I am really confused that if she left her child for 5 days what did she think would happen?

Living in supported accomodation really isn't as supported as people tend to believe. Yes, you get a support worker allocated to you when you arrive at the accomodation but it's all very low level. There's barely any follow up during the entirety of your stay and because they're so understaffed/busy, it's difficult to even get a hold of your SW at the best of times. I'm not surprised people in the surrounding rooms/flats didn't appear to be concerned with the little girl's cries. (If she cried at all, that is. I remember reading smth about medical advisors mentioning she might not have cried much ) There are a LOT of families with very young children so quite a bit of noise/crying at all times so I doubt her cries would have been thought of as odd if that makes sense?

Having said that, if it had been noted (presumably by a SW?) that she left her child 11 times prior to her death, I fail to understand why there wasn't someone regularly checking up on her and her daughter? Especially when it was known she left the poor girl on her own on a regular basis? The fear that little girl must have felt though. Devastating.