Been thinking alot overnight about things said on the last thread about relevance of adjacent experiences and the way people get very opposed to discussion of uncomfortable aspects of systemic failure.
If I hadn't had my own experience of "the system" which I have acknowledged is different in some aspects but nevertheless is resonant in terms of the complexity of medical evidence and its use and application via the legal system to determine the outcome of people's lives, I might not have been so invested, that's true.
I have always acknowledged I am at risk of bias, which is why I never felt qualified to campaign for people caught up in the child protevtion system. Childrens lives are at stake, and child abuse / murder is a reality.
Where I do feel qualified to comment is when people speculate about how being accused of a heinous crime against a child can impact a person and how their behaviour is then solely interpreted to demonstrate guilt.
I also feel qualified to comment on the Catch 22 nature of some investigations due to medical dogma and an unwillingness to examine cases from an individual perspective once they stray into the legal arena.
In this case, there is a real danger of medical dogma being pretty much invented (air down NG tube causing death for example). For someone to be convicted on that premise, yet it not be re-examined legally when the expert in question rows back on it undermines the justice system in an embarrassing and potentially devastating way for any future cases.
I think the majority of people questioning the safety of the convictions here have valid reasons to do so. If one or two experts had come out after the trial raising questions, and those questions had been answered scientifically with research evidence and precedent, that would be one thing. The sheer numbers of dissenting voices and lack of concurrence with the original experts opinions speaks to the gravity of the situation.
Nobody wants to see a child abuser / baby killer "get away with it". Ironically, the way this case has been handled may contribute to exactly that. It could also lead to a doubling down on prosecutions and further reluctance of decent expert witnesses wanting to get involved. And we have been here before.
The biggest takeaway for those interested for whatever reason should be that cases that depend on medical evidence to such a huge degree require a more sophisticated process than seems to be currently in operation. And that starting from a premise that a person must be guilty and pursuing an outcome to reflect that by fair means or foul causes more issues than it solves, not just for defendants but for the victims too.
If one truly believes in the "innocent until proven guilty" principle of our justice system, then it is in the public interest to scrutinise high profile cases. The voices of people who have similar experiences are, in my opinion, an important part of that process to try and establish patterns of bad practise and failures. Telling them it's all in their head allows valuable opportunities to improve the systems involved to slip by.