Sally Clarke has died....

[ZZMum]

Poor poor woman... how awful for her family after all they went thru...

I think anyone who kills their own child where the child is under a year old should never be jailed. Prison isn't very effective anyway, not that SC did it, but in general. Didn't we used to have a separate offence called infanticide with lesser penalties? May be we still do.

The locking up of the supposedly insane is used all over the world to get rid of people others don't like. We must tolerate difference more. The Government is pushing through quite a few bits of legislation which seem to want everyone to be the same and to stifle debate and hold people without trial. It's a pity Cherie Booth isn't PM not her husband.

xenia - totally with you on that one.

Another 'agree' here.

Yes, Xenia, I agree with you too.

What totally tragic news.

I knew SC slightly - I used to work with her - and I agree with Pollypeachum that there's no way the person I knew could have been guilty. She was one of the nicest people you could meet. Both legal teams involved in her original case should be hanging their heads in shame.

That point about both legal teams being culpable is wholeheartedly seconded here. It seems to me that her defence team let her down.
I can only reiterate that she was a thoroughly nice woman. What happened to her is beyond travesty.

And Xenia, I strongly second what you have just said about criminal liability for chld killing - although would limit it to a mother who kills her child, not the father.

I wouldn't go so far as to introduce insanity into the mix as a defence/reason for exculpation. If my experience is anything to go by, women go bonkers after childbirth but its not insanity/mental disorder/unnatural - it is part and parcel of the whole pregnancy and birth thing.

We are so not geared up for this in our society.

Agree with Xenia - never thought about it before

After her guilty verdict, Sally Clarke was absolutely vilified. The prosecution used the fact that she wrote on a photograph of her son Harry "I like to sleep and look angelic most of the day but at night I prefer to stay awake and keep mummy and daddy awake with me", so suggest this meant she hated him and wanted to kill him! Can you imagine what kind of evidence can be used against any of us. I am certain that I have posted that when my ds kept me awake for hour after hour every night that 'I wanted to throw him out of the window'.
Also, yes, she did drink too much when she was younger (and how many threads on MN are from women worried about their drinking?) but she was lied about in court. For example, police found eight bottles of wine
for a dinner party that the prosecution called 'a fictional dinner party' suggesting she was planning to drink them all herself. Well, for a start, we quite often have several bottles of wine in the house, and secondly, it was NOT 'fictitious'. I heard a radio programme about her ordeal and the people invited to the party actually appeared on it to say they were coming over that evening.
All sorts of wicked things were said about that poor woman. Even the fact that she had her children in her thirties was used to portray her as an unnatural woman who 'put her career ahead of motherhood' and so would be more likely to murder her own babies! Shocking, shocking misognyny.

The more I read on this thread, the angrier I get for Sally

This proposed change might help in cases where the mother really has killed her child (not in the SC case where she didn't).

"A new procedure is to be made available in infanticide cases. Mothers who kill
infant children due to very severe post-natal depression may deny the offence took
place at all. They may consequently refuse to undergo a medical examination even
though they were mentally ill. A murder conviction is the wrong result in such cases.
We will make it possible for the Court of Appeal to reconsider their case, and substitute
a verdict of infanticide, if a medical examination conducted post-trial shows that the
mother was suffering from severe post-natal depression. Infanticide will retain a
discretionary life sentence maximum penalty."
www.lawcom.gov.uk/docs/murder_press_briefing.pdf

that's interesting but isnt of relevance to the situation sally clarke faced..... no one killed her babies, whether in fit of pnd or otherwise.

sorry I havent read the whole thread I just have to post to say how heartbroken I am for Sally and her family. I am in tears at the moment.

I had severe PND and on top of everything else for a time I lived in fear that my baby would die of SIDS and I would then be convicted of his death... I just cant imagine how people can cope with losing a baby and then all that. Poor poor woman. I hope she has peace with her babies now.

Just seen a piece on This Morning about Sally (they followed these cases very carefully). Interviewed Angela Canning who pointed out, unlike released prisoners who really are guilty, there is no help for victims of miscarriages of justice who leave prison - they are just thrust out of the door and left to get on with it. Terrible.

One of the interviewees said Donna Anthony's solicitor spent 7 years working on the case without being paid because he was convinced of her innocence. She had no-one else, no family, no friends, no husband - if it hadn't been for one committed solicitor, she'd still be in there. Horrifying.

You're quite right, edam, and from what he seemed to be saying, she is BETTER OFF than Sally Clark, Angela Cannings, etc. because everybody abandoned her.

Heartbreaking.

I didn't really understand his thinking there, tbh, unless he meant she didn't have the added torment of worrying about how her family were surviving without her... IIRC the poor woman had to stay with her solicitor when she was released as she literally had nowhere to go.

"DISGRACED paediatrician Prof Sir Roy Meadow raked in at least £50,000 from public funds for giving "expert evidence" in a series of controversial trials of mothers accused of killing their babies"

from The Scotsman

And he did not take the time to check his facts , he never even met Donna Anthony and repeatedly referred to her daughter as "he".

?I do not find the circumstances of his life or his death are likely to have been caused by natural illness. On the other hand, I find that the circumstances of his life and death are typical of a child who has been smothered and thereby killed.?

from here

RM has not been seen since Friday - say his neighbours. He's run to the hills, I think.

Edam - what I think the solicitor was trying to say was that SC, AC etc. had their husbands, surviving children, families around them as a constant reminder of what they had lost, whereas DA had nobody and nothing, so was able to make a completely new start.

whatever the truth of it, the system, society, call it what you will has let these women down horrendously.

The more I read the more angry I feel for her. Can't imagine what her poor husband and son must be going through After all the fight. Truly disgusting how the family have been treated.

I remember that awful wicked man scoffing at people who said that a baby could pick up a button and choke on it, and thinking 'has this man ever even seen a baby?'

I remember thinking that, too Aloha. So so sad.

What a foul, foul man .