To wonder what on earth happened with the Leiland James case?

[Grasscrowns]

Utterly horrific, but AIBU to wonder what on earth prompted a woman with no criminal history to ‘leather’ a baby? Even people who believe a good hiding won’t hurt them and other such stupid statements don’t apply it to babies.

I think there are sadly lots of cases where children are harmed in the home and there parents have no prior convictions, its not always the case that they are known to be violent.
That case is so desperately sad on so many levels. Why oh why did she carry on with the placement when she wasnt coping or bonding with the baby. She sounds like a thoroughly nasty piece of work.
I wonder how his birth mother feels.

She was sentenced last week to a minimum of 18 years. She clearly had something wrong with her as the photos of her gurning face taken in the hospital when the poor little lad was lying dying show.

I genuinely believe people like her have no prior criminal record, but do have a history of this sort of thing.

It’s hard to understand this case. She and her partner must have been scrutinised to the 9th degree in order to be approved for adoption. And they could have given him up, he’d have been snapped up by others desperate for a baby. It’s so heart breaking.

Lack of criminal record is meaningless, really, all it means is she's never been caught and found guilty.

I'll never understand why she didn't just hand him back either.
Thoroughly disgusting excuse for a woman.
I hope she gets a hard time in prison.

I imagine his birth mother is going through absolute hell.

It’s not completely meaningless, @coffeecupsandfairylights

Yes, there’s a reasonable chance that she had a propensity for violence that had never been detected before, but people who go to prison for murder do often have prior convictions as well.

Horrendous.

It's possible that due to circumstances of Leiland being fostered he may have been clingy or cried more than her perception and or experience of other people's babies and she didn't have the patience or compassion to understand and cope so vented her anger at him not being placid like she thought he would be.

In a bizarre way I do feel for her a bit - her state of mind must have been awful. But while I can sort of understand a single loss of temper the texts seem to indicate it wasn’t just that.

Often, but not always.

I suppose my point is that you can't rely on a clear criminal record for anything. It's like DBS checks - all they prove is that on x date, Jane Smith hadn't done anything wrong.

I just don’t understand that.

She abused a child and killed that child.

How can you ‘feel for her’?

I find it so difficult to understand how this happened, given they must have had a thorough adoption assessment and follow up visits as the order hadn't been granted yet.
does anyone know whether maybe they were family carers who were going to care for him permanently rather than actual adopters?

I suppose because I can only assume that she is a hugely damaged and unstable individual, and her life will be utter hell now, not least because she has to live with what she did.

That gorgeous wee boy with the lovely smile. Heartbreaking.
Why oh why ?

If you think the average incident rate of physical domestic abuse is 7 incidents of violence before police are even called, and that often doesn't lead to conviction straight away and that's worth adult victims. You can see how child abuse can go undetected for a long time especially with very young children not yet in childcare settings, and that's just to be noticed/suspected, let alone convicted, when the only witness is a child unable to give clear testimony. This all escalated pretty quickly though.

Yes. It must have been hard for him being fostered at 2 months and then being moved from the foster carer at 8 months when he'd have had time to get attached. He was probably unsettled poor thing

It’s just horribly sad, @LadyEloise1 , isn’t it? I think I echo your ‘why oh why’.

@RewildingAmbridge you can indeed. I suppose the real horribleness here is that he was removed from his birth mother because presumably it was felt he was unsafe and yet what happened to him was so much worse. It feels like a horribly cruel twist.

Who remembers some years ago the Romanian orphans? Many were brought to the U.K. and adopted and families could not cope with these damaged children.

I imagine that people foster and adopt with good intentions but the reality of a child or infant that is perhaps more demanding than they thought it would be beings out many emotions in people, some negative.

I guess she didn't hand Leiland back because she felt a sense of shame that she was unable to cope with looking after him.

It's horrendous to see his sweet face and know that when he was distressed doe whatever reason the hands that should have been caressing and calming him were the fists that caused him pain and suffering.

Her husband was cleared wasn't he? But those messages, my god if I'd sent those to dh when ours were babies he'd have been on the phone to the GP and my mum and probably taken time off to stop me being able to hurt them.

You wouldn’t be saying that if a man murdered a child

All the vetting in the world is meaningless if she had never had sole charge of an infant before. Anyone can be kind to a child in a group setting for an hour or cope with an evening of babysitting. Maintaining calm in the face of a crying baby is true parenting.

It is still not illegal to hit your child. People massively underestimate the force they use and how fast they snap. It’s a conscious decision to not use physical punishment and you see on here all the time people defending it.

She may well have thought what she was doing was reasonable until one day it wasn’t.

It’s irrelevant why she did it tbh. She did it, she refused help or to admit she had problems and that poor baby was the victim.

I think you’re extremely naive about how many people hit their children.

It’s true. Just phone SS and hand him back. But the thing about bullies and narcissists is they feel they have to maintain their public face. It’s a warped sense of priorities. I was surprised she was as candid as she was in the texts to her husband. Why he walked away without convictions I do not understand.

@LemonPalmTree the man game is an old and well established one.

Our expectations of males and females are different and so are the ways they are programmed to behave. I’m hardly weeping in dismay for her my pity lies with the baby, but I do acknowledge something must be badly wrong within her, and that does evoke some response from me.