Mother charged with neglect

[Knackeredboot]

This article has been posted on Facebook and has attracted a lot of angry comments about it from people saying the mother should be steriliser and that she's evil.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c864g0evz9jo

The crime was neglect of a baby that resulted in its death from a mother that had failed to notice that her baby hadn't woken in the night for her usual feeds due to the mothers level of intoxication.

There's no indication that the baby would usually have to be woken for feeds, just that it was the babys usual routine.

The mother was awake but drunk. But had she been asleep then would that have been considered neglect too? She checked on the baby from a distance but did not try to stir. Again, I wouldn't go into my 5mo's room regularly in the night for a close up check on them as I would be asleep also.

It says that the level of intoxication was 2.5times the driving limit which is irrelevant as she wasnt driving.

Am i missing something here? I feel like the commenters are being incredibly hard on her based on the little detail in the article. Although I'm not a big drinker I know loads of couples that get smashed on the weekend while at home with the kids.

You’re completely wrong - the sleeping surface absolutely CAN play a role in SIDS. It’s why it’s advised NOT to leave a sleeping child on the sofa. The risk is higher.

And in another of your posts defending this “mother” you say time of death is not certain - well going by the fact the poor baby had RM it goes to show the death was not that recent.

Expand your knowledge before defending this person, who I hope never has any future children.

Its really sad when any parent of young children drinks enough to become drunk. I should know - my mother was drunk everyday of my childhood- she was a functioning alcoholic- so every night she would be tipsy, slurring her words, stumbling, arguing.

if you paid a childminder to mind your kids for the night and they went off drinking and left the child on a sofa- would that be ok? Why should the child have a lower standard of care with a parent?

I don't think these things are within the realms of normal.

Drinking - yes lots of people drink. I don't think it is usually considered okay to drink loads in sole care of a baby, though.

Putting a baby to sleep on a sofa - I've mainly seen people do this when the baby is napping and they're sitting next to baby. I don't think it's generally accepted it's fine for a baby to sleep there all night. It's definitely not recommended.

Not checking on baby for 14+ hours - this one, I sincerely doubt anyone would say this is safe parenting, regardless of the reasons for it.

I think that the issue here is that the drinking led to baby not being looked after for 14 hours. That's not to say that the mum caused the death of her baby. Just that by being drunk and therefore not checking on baby for 14 hours she was not caring for the baby appropriately. Very sadly the baby died while under inadequate care.

I am sure some people do drink to the point of intoxication, leave their baby unattended and the baby is okay and no one ever finds out. But this kind of awful loss explains why it's not at all safe to do that.

How did the baby actually die?

fell off the sofa? Starvation or suffocation?

It seems the baby would have died regardless

You can say that not checking in baby for 14 hours wouldn’t happen but what difference would it make is baby died suddenly of SIDS at midnight??
Shed have known baby was dead a bit earlier and … the outcome would still have been the same.
Same if she had been checking on baby a few times. It wouldn’t have helped her or anyone ‘know’ baby was going to die of SIDS to prevent it. That’s in the name SUDDEN.

Something else is going on that isn’t in the article.

I agree 😢😢

I’ve never had any reason to look at the actual law but here it is plain as day:

Children and Young Persons Act 1933

b)where it is proved that the death of an infant under three years of age was caused by suffocation (not being suffocation caused by disease or the presence of any foreign body in the throat or air passages of the infant) while the infant was in bed with some other person who has attained the age of sixteen years, that other person shall, if he was, when he went to bed F12or at any later time before the suffocation], under the influence of drink F13or a prohibited drug], be deemed to have neglected the infant in a manner likely to cause injury to its health.

Clearly this woman neglected her child. I fail to see how it is anything but neglect. Firstly - inadequate place to sleep, not checking on the baby, being so intoxicated she hadn’t actually provided the most basic care for the baby.
I am so sick and tired of people failing to do even the absolute minimum for their kids and getting away with it.

And if it was a man who'd been in charge of his 5 month old, got pissed and largely ignored them for over 12 hours, you absolutely know people would be screaming for him to be hung, drawn and quartered.

Why? There's no mention of SIDS. There's mention of not notice deteriorating health. Babies who die of SIDS don't deteriorate.

I think the thing is that we don't really know what happened. I've been reading about women who have lost babies after drinking, passing out lying on them (not saying that's the case here). Most of those women seemed to have serious alcohol problems. So to me those are awful stories about women who were quite unwell themselves and seriously neglected their children as a result. In many of these cases I wouldn't see how insulting those women would help an already desperately sad situation.

I think this was definitely neglect, but who knows what happened and what led up to it or contributed to the death of the poor baby. Neglecting her child might not mean she is a terrible person who didn't care. She may just not have been capable of adequate parenting either on that day, or for a longer period.

It's desperately sad what happened to her baby either way.

The article says he wasn’t able to see the signs of deterioration, you have no way of knowing if the baby was showing signs of distress that could have resulted in a better outcome. It doesn’t look like the cause of death was conclusive.

I don’t think this is relevant here - that appears to be about people who suffocate their child whilst co-sleeping and intoxicated.

Which is why I’ve been asking why everyone is talking about SIDS.
Because SIDS is sudden…..
And if that’s sudden, then you won’t catch the deterioration….

As I said before, I’m sure there is more to it than what we think we know.
And I really query the fact it was SIDS.

Someone above said they are friend of a friend of the mum and she was sleeping on the sofa with baby. So if that's the case it would be this, probably.

I have to admit I’m on the fence sbout this one. It doesn’t seem like the mothers actions brought about the child’s death. She’s just been charged because the baby happened to die. If someone reported you to SS for drinking in your home whilst in charge of sleeping children I doubt you’d even get a visit tbh, might be wrong but has anyone ever been charged with child cruelty in the same circumstances where there was no SIDS?

If not I don’t think it’s fair, I think its natural to want to blame someone when sad things happen. Lots of women have gone to jail after their babies died partly on the grounds of dodgy statistics but I suspect the juries convicting them also felt a natural sense of justice. It is unthinkable that our precious babies sometimes just die so we lol for someone to blame regardless of whether their actions led to that death.

It says she checked on them from the doorway though which doesn’t make sense if sleeping next to.

Yeah I don't really know if it's true or not

Honestly its awful, sounds like the baby was dumped on the sofa and forgotten about. At only 5 months old. It takes quite a while for rigor mortis to set in, the baby must have been left for ages.

I agree with you OP

This was me, she didn’t go to bed, leave the baby on the sofa and not check on the baby for 14 hours as people up thread are assuming. It also wasn’t SIDS not sure where people are getting that from as it wasn’t mentioned at all.

She co-slept with the baby on the sofa whilst drunk and the baby suffocated to death. For those asking about the other children, the father took them to prevent them being removed from her by social services. However this happened in 2021 so I believe they have been returned to her now.

I think people are assuming SIDS because of the mention of the sofa, which is an unsafe sleeping surface.

I do think this was neglect. Drinking vodka and getting plastered with a 5 month old is not a wise decision. Poor baby.

I also lack sympathy for her as she was 37 and really should have known better.