Babysitter Suzanne Holdsworth cleared

[Upwind]

"Ms Holdsworth, a former supermarket worker who spent three years in prison, was then asked if she had thought the day would ever come when she would be proven innocent. After bursting into tears and putting her head into her partner's chest, she replied: "No, I thought I would be in there for ever."During the re-trial the jury was given the stark choice of deciding whether Ms Holdsworth or Kyle's mother, Clare Fisher, 24, caused the severe head injuries."
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/3834679/Babysitter-Suzanne-Holdsworth-cleared-of-murdering-toddler-K yle-Fisher.html

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That case and the Keran Henderson story made me think that if I was a childminder I would think twice about taking on any child with health problems. It seemed that, in both cases, it was just assumed that a terrible crime had been committed and that the effects were seen immediately, effectively reversing the burden of proof - the carers had no way of proving their innocence.

poor poor woman, what a terrible story.
why do they keep referring to her as a former supermarker shelf-stacker?
(rhetorical question)

I suppose in these stories they often refer to the person's occupation.

The BBC outlines the mistakes that were made here:
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7787933.stm

Good job by Newsnight in helping to clear the the poor woman! So very scary that she was convicted by a jury given the baby's problems and the lack of any evidence she had harmed him.

It must be an absolute nightmare being on a jury for this type of case. I would hate to have that level of responsibility.

yes but her former occupation is wildly irrelevant, isn't it?
I hope she is awarded a massive sum of money and I hope someone gets fired, which is not my usual reaction but dear god there has to be some consequences in this case.

Poor woman.

Scary thing is, she was only cleared because she was 'lucky' enough to come under the gaze of John Sweeney. If her case hadn't attracted the attention of one investigative journalist - and there aren't many of them left - she'd still be rotting in jail.

There are so many cases where a child dies and the automatic assumption of the police and criminal justice system seems to be 'this is a crime, we will find the guilty person' rather than looking to see what the possible explanations are. Ludicrous, far-fetched hypotheses seem to somehow attract the cops and the CPS and court, without anyone stopping to think 'what do we actually know about what happened'.

Look at the 'salt poisoning' case where the prosecution had people convicted on the dubious grounds that the adoptive parents MUST have forcefed a child salt. Surely any parent or reasonably intelligent adult would know you can't forcefeed someone salt without them vomiting?

Poor woman. Poor kid. Was there something wrong with him in the first place? In the photo of him as a toddler it looks like there is something wrong with one of his eyes. Not sure if that was relevant.

The video of him as a baby playing with christmas presents almost had me in tears last night.

Yes Georgie, that's the point - the police and CPS completely ignored his very obvious medical problems. You only have to look at him to think 'uh oh, there could be something wrong here'. And he had a previous injury while in the care of his mother. I am NOT saying she is guilty, but that the police should have asked themselves 'is there any more likely reason for this child's death' and 'is there any evidence of an assault'.

(I don't mean to sound nasty about the poor boy, just when I saw his photo, I immediately thought of hydrocephalus - you would expect doctors and the police to have checked it out.)

So glad she's been cleared.

I guess Keran Henderson is still in prison though? Does anyone know where things are with her appeal?

Oh I have just found Keran Henderson's husband's blog here
He uses a term I have never heard before, 'Noble Cause Corruption' (ie the police need training in it).

It beggars belief, really, doesn't it? On the one hand you have a mother whose child has already suffered a serious injury whilst in her care and who left the same child home alone locked in a bedroom; on the other hand you have a childminder who has been an excellent mother to her own children and who has never had anything serious happen to any child in her care. There is a child with an obvious (even to a layperson) medical condition and medical notes stating that he was due to have an operation to correct a brain condition, yet the Home office pathologist states he has a perfectly normal brain.

The conclusion of the police, the CPS and eventually a jury is then that the childminder with an unblemished record must have murdered said child. Unutterably frightening.

Did you hear the bit on the news re the Holdsworth case about how the police logged a phone conversation with one of the surgeons in which he supposedly said the existing brain injury couldn't have caused the child's death? Said surgeon is now saying he has no memory of this phone call, would never have said what he is alleged to have said and in any case would never discuss a patient with a stranger over the phone.

I think the main problem is that there still is a belief that a mother 'cannot' harm her own child. They obviously never read Medea.

it said the weechildhad injury sustained under his mothers care one year prior to his death. ( no inference of assault etc) thisled to somebrain injury of a type associated with fits.
No winnersin this. Both women and families have had their lives decimated.

But there have been several miscarriage of justice cases re shaken baby syndrome where the mother harming the baby is precisely what they believed.
I think it's more the police being too ready to jump to conclusions and not being exploratory enough in their thinking. The thing that brought me up short was in a documentary about shaken baby syndrome a few years ago where a doctor was suggesting medical rather than criminal causes for brain damage and a policewoman described this as 'unhelpful'. The police seemed to see their job as getting a conviction, rather than finding out what happened.

I remember seeing a doctor on TV demonstrating with a dummy baby (right weight in body, head, etc) how long and hard you'd need to shake a baby for to cause this type of damage. He said it was really hard to sustain this and probably wasn't possible in reality. I know I wouldn't physically be able to do this and I am reasonably fit.

TheCrackFox - all a jury in a criminal case has to do is decide whether the accused is guilty beyond reasonable doubt

That is why these cases scare me - how could there NOT have been reasonable doubt? It doesn't matter whether you like the look of the accused or not or if your instinct says they done it. You just have to decide if there is enough evidence to prove they did, which should not be nearly as difficult.

I wonder would the judge who sensibly halted the case against Colin Stagg have done similar here? And I think it is a real disgrace that the police have refused to apologise to Suzanne Holdsworth.

All you need is a convincing 'expert'. There was all those child abuse cases that had the same 'expert' who was later discredited.

With the Colin Stagg case I can just imagine the scientists punching the air yelling 'science:1, psychology:0')

A convincing expert for the prosecution and a weak defence, perhaps? In the Keran Henderson case it seemed that the defence had not properly prepared itself because it had never occurred to them she was going to be convicted when there just wasn't any evidence.
I don't know what happened with Suzanne Holdsworth but I doubt she had access to a top brief, or would have been in a position to know or do anything about it if her defence lawyer was not that hot.
Suppose you had been in the jury for the Suzanne Holdsworth case, it might well have occurred to you to wonder why there was no blood etc on the bannisters, but you would then think 'Oh well, if her defence hasn't mentioned it it probably isn't an issue.'

God- stories like this (and the terible miscarriage of justice against Colin Stagg highlighted yesterday) make my blood cold

terrible

The trouble is that juries never like to overturn expert opinion.
If someone with years of experience tells them that they should convict then generally they will.
I think the defence should have rebutted the prosecution medical stuff much more ferociously...although it costs a fortune so no doubt that came into it.

Should the judge perhaps have more of a role in advising the jury in cases like this, where there is no real evidence but lots of expert opinion?

Well, looking at the sorry catalogue of cases of parents wrongly convicted of harming children on the say-so of dubious experts like Roy Meadows and David Southall, I wouldn't place much reliance in judges seeing fair play.

I really don't understand why judges, who one assumes are reasonably intelligent and supposedly good at testing assertions, seem to go all wibbly the minute anyone mentions medical evidence. They didn't spot how ridiculous Meadow's maths was, did they?

I am Kyle mam and feel I need to get my side of the story across in order for people to get some understanding.

Not once from the beginning have we ever pointed the finger at Suzanne, we listened to police evidence and just followed everything what was given to us and said. Right from the beginning of Kyles death the start of my hell happened. Unless you know the full extent of everything you would never get the full picture. I understand people are commenting on the results and everyone is entitled to their opinion. My son was a poorly boy after everything was investigated into and I have had to struggle everyday since he died. For anyone to even comment and feel that I would ever hurt my son physically makes me feel sick, I could never hurt my little boy. I have made the biggest mistake of my life by leaving my son on his own that night, as to why I done it I dont know, all I know it was selfish, stupid and the biggest mistake I have ever made in my life, That guilt rips me apart everyday of my life, and so it should cos I shouldnt have done that, but that is the only thing I have to be guilty for, I have lost my flesh and blood, my life and the best thing to ever happen to me. The papers pointed out that I was looked at but that was not the case, it was only the defence pointing the blame as that is their job to cause doubt to quash the conviction. Suzanne got found Not Guilty because they couldnt 100% convict. Only Suzanne and Kyle know what happened that night and Kyle isnt here. We, as a family, have never wanted an innocent woman convicted but we just had to take each day, day by day and try and take in everything what was being told to us. I waited 20 month to bury my son in order for full investgations to be carried out, that was torture for me. The fall were Kyle fell out his buggy was not how the brain injury occured, after further investigations it shown he had this from birth, it was only noticed cos of the fall. It was then I noticed Kyles eye was considerably lower than the other one and if it wasnt for me the Doctor would have discharged him at one point. There is so many questions from everyone but these are questions that will remain unanswered as Kyle had the abnormalities no one has ever seen before.

I understand I have not been a model parent, far from it. I made mistakes, I know that, but I do not have the chance to correct them now and that guilt kills me more and more eveyday. However, my son was my life and no one could ever deny the love I had for my son. Not only was he my son, he was a best friend to me. No one could make me feel any guiltier than what I do already for making the mistakes I made but not a day goes by were I dont think of that. Just please try and understand I have been through hell the past 4 years and had to make decisions what I wouldnt wish on my worst enemy, you couldnt even imagine some of the decisions ive had to make to try and get answers. However, I live each day with my son by my side and will continue to do so in order for me to carry on.