OPinions on the woman who killed her son?

[SherriHewsonsNipple]

do you think she desverved 9 years?

Am i right in thinking he wasnt strictly speaking terminally ill

I did say I think I thought the sentence should be suspended so I do think she was guilty (not sure about murder but unlawfulkilling yes.... its the whys and wherefores I disagree with IYSWIM.

Anyway 2/10 jurors agree with me,am always in the minoity me

MrsT I get that yes.

I can't see how she wouldn't have had PTSD tbh, and thats very different to someone choosing in a straight mind to release someone from suffering becuase being disabled must mean you are suffering.

The problem is that if you take this one case and deam it a mitigating circumstance, then you set a huge precedent for the potential illimination of disabled lives. After all, what to one person is unbearable might be a completely fulfilled life to another, so where do you draw the line at which lives are worth terminating and which aren't?

Daniel James for instance went to Switzerland to commit suicide because he found his life as a quadroplegic unbearable. Yet hundreds of thousands of quadroplegics lead totally happy fulfilled lives and would never even consider the possibility that their lives were not worth living. Now imagine if Daniel James had not been able to communicate his wishes to his parents and they'd taken him to dignitas anyway, there would be people who said that they did what they did out of the love for their son, so where does that leave the rest of the people in the same position as him? What value does that place on their lives?

Is a disabled life only worth living if the disabled person can say it is? If they can't is it open to the interpretation of whoever claims to love that person most?

You could see it that way Wannabe

Or you could say that massiveamounts need to be elarned about the stress reactions of loved ones in the first (year?_ post serious injury and that steps need to be a,mde to ensure both support for the person and safety for the loved one.

When you understand something,you can stop it.

This clearly wasn't an average case anyway, she did it twice. WTF failed so badly that she was even able to try again? And by creating that opportunity didn't society in some way let her down as well?

I suppose I dont think jail terms will matter to her- her son is dead and her punishment is in her own mind.

'Is a disabled life only worth living if the disabled person can say it is? If they can't is it open to the interpretation of whoever claims to love that person most? '

Of course not but it is one thing saying that from afar and another judging when you are at best going through a bereavement process, maybe with thoughts of conversations about this sort of thing in your head, and traumatised.

There areplenty ofpeoplewho would chooseto die in this scenario, should their decisions be disregarded becuase it might imply alldisabled people want it? I don't think so. We have toelarn to look at cases individually. Lots of learning to do in fact.

but you could say that about any one who murders, they have to live with it. if you commit murder you have to pay for it. just because it is a family member and they are disabeld it neither here nor there.
of course there should be help in place for family, but that cannot be use imo as an excuse.
of we allow people to do these acts and then let them off, will our children be safe?? I don't think so.
I think there should be more laws to protect the vunerable not less.

Well you could 2shos but would you really say the lossof a random stranger you knifed is the sameasthe los of your son that you adored?

There has to be a qualitative difference, surely?

There should be morelaws to protect the vulnerable yes, but I think that someone going through thisleveloftrauma, and who has already displayed signs of the crime she is eventually convicted of,should be classed as vulnerable. How can she not have been? There'sjust nopthing in this scenario that makesme think the mother wasoperating in full capability. grief is like that, after all.

I think what she did was completely disgraceful. It was not a caring act, it was crazy and it was murder.

I completely agree with what Riven and MmeLindt and others have said in this case.

How on earth can anyone think that just because he got brain damaged in an accident it somehow justifies taking his life? And it always riles me when people talk about quality of life, in these kinds of situations or when talking about euthanasia. How on earth can you judge whether a life is worth living unless you are the one living it?

In the past, New Scientist has had some interesting articles about these philosophical areas but I can't remember them well enough to summarise or link to them.

Anyway, these kinds of conversations make me very and .

but what if it wasn't a parent who killed him? What if a member of hospital staff did it? Out of compassion? Would that be ok then?

I agree some people wouldn't want to live like that, but equally people kill themselves for all manner of reasons, depression/the loss of a job/health/a partner/debt getting out of control and the list goes on. But there is a difference between someone choosing to take their own life, and someone making that choice on their behalf without them having a say.

I now somepeopledid say that mummypig but I just wanted toclarify that I did not ssay it wasOK becuase he was brain damaged- it matters tomethat peoplerealise that becuase of my own ds3'sSN (ds1also sn but not somuch in way of LD etc)

OK I willtry and put this differnlty.

Person triess to attack a child, and manages it.Welock up person absolutely,quite right.

But ifperson fails,and tries agin and manages it wouldn't we be then asking why person was free to try again? Wouldn'twefeelthat whatever gave that person accessto the child again was at least partly toblame? Especially if weknew person had experiened severe trauma recenlty andwas at risk of psychological damage.

The act oftaking ther peson'slife is absolutely wrong, no doubt there inmymind, but the chain ofevents leading up to it would be a big prt of it all. After all,isn't this exactly what that phrase 'saving someone from himself' means?

Wannabe no it wouldn't be Okthen.

My argument is that Mother hadalready shown she was considering this,and it is inconceivable that she did not have some level of PTSD in the circs. So at least part of the blame has IMO toliewith the peopleor system that had her walking around and able to gain access.

It is impossible toact in afully functioning manner in the immediate aftermath of such grief, they knew she was a risk,so why on earth was it allowed to happen?Shouldn't somene have shouldered that level of rationality she was seemingly unable to possess?

I don't do all this blame stuff, the person who commited the crime is to blamed imo, I hate all this oh it wasn't thier fault stuff.
perhaps no one expected her to do it again, I mean what "loving" mother would do that......

Ah welllife isn;t like that isn't it? If we assume everyone is reposnsible equally for their actions then what,lock ds1 up in the same way we would an NT adult who might hit? Nothing stands alone in behaviour,, everything is influenced by something somewhere and a fair society takes that into account.

The mother had been banned from the hospital. Unfortunately, she managed to trick her way in using a false identity. Presumably, the only way to have kept it from happening would have been to have sent her to prison after the first attempt?

WOuld you have felt the same, Peachy, if it had been the girlfriend who killed him while the mother and the doctors still believed he had a chance?

I think the Judge's comments were spot on.
No-one is allowed to take the life of another.

Cory I honestly don't know,that would depnd in part howlong they'd been together closeness etc- mothers aren'talways right after all; relationships vary massively however

' Presumably, the only way to have kept it from happening would have been to have sent her to prison after the first attempt?
'

Yes, I think they should have done that.better a live person and a sentence for gbh /attempted murder or whatever than a dead person and a murder conviction. I think both werelet down by contimnuing toallow her to make attempts. Psych assessment is bollocks sadly,you only have to look at the stats for people in prisons with MH isues and the like, but that would have been my guess - from- afar

but how do you know she had MH issues?
a lot of people just see diasabled as not worthy, maybe she did as well, antything better than a disabled child.....

I don't 2shoes but I do think it is fair to assume she had significant stress and trauma that can very often result in PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder). being placed in a prison is notmna sign she is clear of that as a great many people in prison do have MH issues often undiagnosed- SLT gave me some stats forSn in prison as well and it was staggering (not suggesting she had SN but just that pre-term diagnostic processesare pretty terrible)

The griefprocess (which is triggerd not just beya ctual bereavement but trauma such as having a child suffersevere injury etc, divorce- anything that causes amassivelife change) is going i think to adversely affect someones functioning and decision making skills.

And if she didn't have MH she should have been in prison.

She was at the very elast vulnerable becuase iof what had happened, recently bereaved (in teh wider sense)people are. If you have a vulnerable person presenting a risk to someone and don't then prevent them from repeating that action then surely you (not spec.you 2shoes LOl.... ) become implicit in the result? If Ipalced ds1 iin a childcare facility and he attacked someone, given he has said he willif I do,am I not then complicit in the result? I would say so.

'S funny as it means I am happier for a custodial sentence before the esecond attack I know, but that does seem to be the case.

surely if she did have MH isuues Or ptsd(is that the right initials) then that would have been used in her defence.

often when these cases come to light people seem to think what the person did was ok as they had problems...... imo it is never ok.
but peachy you can't(not you but royal you again ) use your son as comparison as he has sn, no more than I can use dd, if they killed someone(dd by running someone over with her wheelchair) then thier sn would have to be taken into account, this woman did not have sn, in fact she actually had a background working with sn..
(hugs peachy as hates argueing with her)

LOL 2shoes

A good defence woulod have played on psych issues regardlessof whether they acttually existed I think, criminal assessment is notorious for not picking up MH issues

But even someonw who has lost their child who hasntgot a diagnosable MH isue will be suffering from trauma in a way that would make them vulnerable iyswim. At the very least, she deserved help in the form of preventing it from happening and if that ws incarceration of some form then so be it.

That there are lessons to be learned is I am sure true, although it is probably worth bearing in mind that this sort of case is probably incredibly rare. That the health and police system could have done things better does not however absolve her from responsibility. In any case she has been given an incredibly light sentence for murder, so I would assume that her undoubted unhappiness, and her apparent love were taken into consideration.

At the moment however it is not possible to convict someone of murder and then let them go free. She was given the shortest possible sentence. Now whether she should have been tried for manslaughter on the grounds of reduced responsibility (the mental health aspect) is I suppose another matter, but none of the reporting has suggested that she was suffering from mental health issues at the time of either attack, and surely that would have been the first line of defense?

There is a good article on this story in the Indy : www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/dominic-lawson/dominic-lawson-who-are-we-to-decide-that-a -dependent-life-is-a-pointless-life-1878817.html

Riven makes very good points. Being disabled isn't the only way a child can stress you out- but it's the only way that is likely to get a killer any sympathy in court. We need to think about why that is.