Teenager guilty of murder.

[placemats]

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/jun/23/teenager-guilty-baby-herefordshire-hide-pregnancy-paris-mayo

Apart from the fact that she was raped, if consent to sex is to be a legal term, I find the prosecutions allegations appalling.

'But the prosecution alleged Mayo must have known she was pregnant but chose to deliberately conceal it because she was always planning to kill the baby.'

Perhaps Mayo didn't get early abortion help she needed. I know of one woman, who had 3 previous children, who didn't realise she was pregnant, thought it was early menopause until 4 weeks before her due date. However to allege she was always planning to kill the baby is a step too far. It intimates that those in authority know this child's mind.

Name changed.

I've been a teenager pregnant after rape. Lucky enough to access abortion. Not lucky enough for anyone to notice I'd been raped. Left with much PTSD not least from the experience at hospital. But NO REGRETS to actual abortion.

I did not, could not, think of what was inside me as a baby. Babies were what happened to my older cousins and celebrated loved and wanted. What was in me was shame and fear and a perversion of how the world was supposed to be ordered. And teenagers are children themselves.

Oh God, it's just so unbelievably sad. I can't help feeling very sorry for her although what she did was horrific. Id guess she was obviously out of her mind at that moment and acted completely out of character due to shock.

I hope they are sympathetic towards this when giving her punishment, she is clearly going to need a lot of help going forward.

Surely this is infanticide not murder?

Thank you for both responding to this sympathetically and I wish you all the best @RidiculousBastards

I've had an abortion, in my late 30s, and had to access via a telephone box, BPAS because my UK GP surgery didn't do abortion referrals. No regrets either. I did go on to have another child. I feared a third miscarriage which is why I had the abortion - had two children by then. I had moved from London to a more rural community.

Surely this is infanticide not murder?

The jurors had been told they could also consider a charge of infanticide, but took eight hours and 38 minutes to convict Mayo of murder.

That's from the article Op linked to - I don't know why they wouldn't go with infanticide would make more sense with a 15 year old and behavior straight after birth.

I see this judgement in the same light as the one against Shamima Begum.

Both 15 year old girls, not mature enough to fully understand the decisions they make.

In this case, probably driven by desperation and fear.

She then assaulted the baby so violently that he suffered fractures to his skull and brain damage, and when he later showed signs of life Mayo stuffed cotton wool balls into his mouth to suffocate him before putting his body into a bin bag.

I don't see how anyone can defend her despite the awful circumstances.

She could have abandoned him alive (also awful but not killing him)

This is murder. Pure and simple.

I don't see how you can describe it as 'murder, pure and simple' if you have never been a 15 year old giving birth.

I first gave birth when I was 32 years old and found it both exhilarating and terrifying at the same time. I'd had a previous miscarriage by then and I wasn't a teenager of 15.

I can't understand your lack of empathy @Mortgagewoes1 Though I do hope you get out of your mortgage woes.

What the fuck has that got to do with this?

One deliberately and illegally travelled abroad to help commit unspeakable crimes against people. One had a baby and made an awful choice out of fear and desperation.

the fact you think they’re comparable just baffles me

Fear and hormones can fuck up thinking in adult women let alone 15 year old- it's why we have infanticide as an option which Jury were given here and rejected.

I think everyone thinks what happened to the poor baby was bloody awful and I suspect that however baby was killed most posters would still think that.

However I do wonder if the violence towards the baby countered against her - as violence in women is often considered unfeminine by society and often more punished.

Thank you for sharing your story Placemats and on such an emotive thread. I can only imagine how you felt then and feel now.

This situation is heartbreaking for all.

We can’t know what she was thinking but 15 year olds not realising they are pregnant, or realising it and then out of desperation shutting out the evidence of their own bodies are not uncommon. To attribute her failure to obtain an abortion to premeditation of murder to me is an extraordinary leap of faith. There is no way they could know this to be true in the absence of her documenting this somewhere and seems to me to be motivated by society’s need to see the worst in women’s motives. Or in this case, a child’s.

Of course it is also a tragedy that Stanley died as he did and didn’t have a chance to live and grow. But the damage this will have done to the girl’s psychological well-being will be permanent and I can’t see the sense in a murder conviction. Isn’t criminal punishment at least in part to maintain society’s laws. How will this conviction help prevent future cases happening? All it will do is add to the terror of young girls who find themselves unexpectedly pregnant.

I say this as a professional who has been involved in a case of concealed pregnancy in which the baby died in unclear circumstances and I don’t think any one of us involved will forget that.

I can't see this as anything but murder. To be that physically violent to a newborn, in different ways too. They think he probably cried ffs

Had she abandoned him, ran off in terror id have had a lot of sympathy for her. As it is she gave birth at home and then killed and concealed him.

This is a desperately sad story. I'm.not sure what to make of it really.
Something like this happened in a town close to me, but this was a 28 year woman, in a relationship, told nobody she was pregnant, even her partner. Gave birth in the bathroom, killed the baby and put the remains in the kitchen bin.
She is currently serving a life sentence for murder

I am surprised it wasn't an infanticide verdict but perhaps there are factors not being reported. This happened quite near where I live but this is the first I've heard of it too, so it seems to have been kept fairly quiet and not had much reporting overall (a good thing IMO, she was after all a child herself at the time).

This is an interesting link and from reading that it seems that a murder verdict in such circumstances is actually very unusual.

Quite

Because it is murder. There are plenty of women who give birth in impossible situations across the world and they still don't murder their babies.

@SerfnTerf this is the one I was referring to in my comment x

Meanwhile the rapist of a 13 yr old in Scotland got community service because he was under the age of 25. I despair.

She was 15.
Teenage pregnancy over lockdown.

Guilty or not guilty, murder or infanticide, nothing she can do will ever make this good again.

This is a living hell for a child propulsed into the adult world, a world she most likely did not truly understand.

The female body is complex and it takes a while to understand. The verdict and reporting make me believe society is still playing catch-up.

It was a whole year before lockdown!

I compared this to Shamima Begum because they were both 15 year old girls committing crimes.

She travelled abroad after being groomed by adults older than her.

Where does a 15 year old girl get the money to buy flight tickets to Turkey?

Paris Mayo - desperately frightened 15 year old trying not to let anyone find out she was pregnant or had a baby.

Name changed for this.

I have been a pregnant 15 year old, thank god not from rape as that's another horrendous element to this story. I knew I was pregnant from around 12 weeks but I concealed this until it was impossible to conceal anymore and then acted surprised when it came out. I was too frightened to access any healthcare and I basically buried my head in the sand that it was even happening to me.

During the period where I knew, I repeatedly punched myself in the stomach. I tried throwing myself to the ground, I jumped off a quite high roof enough to badly sprain my ankle, I contemplated stabbing myself in the stomach. Anything to try and trigger a miscarriage.

So I find this case very hard, no you absolutely do not think straight. However, I doubt I could not have gone on to kill a living baby, the baby that was in my tummy during that time where I was trying to myself and 'it' was not to me a baby.

That being said also, I was lucky, when it did eventually come out, I was supported and loved by those close to me and gave birth to and brought up a beautiful healthy wonderful child who I love very much.

If I had not had that support, if I was alone, frightened and panicked, who knows. I doubt I would have taken those actions personally but I can see how someone could.

It is horrifying what she did and I do not condone it but I feel for her and I hope she gets help.

What she did was murder. Teenager or not. They can't be seen to go easy on her or they will have other women opting to just kill the baby when it pops out instead of seeking an abortion.

Although I do hope police investigated why she was too scared to tell her family and if her school was negligent in not realising.

This is all so sad. Based on the tiny bit of info I’ve seen, Paris’s parents shouldn't be targeted with blame either. Paris needs strong support not incarceration. I really hope she gets it. She’s gone through way too much. She’s a child herself, even at 19

It is awful, so terribly sad for the baby who lost his life and for me, really sad that a fifteen year old wasn't able to access the help she needed to prevent this tragedy. As somebody who quickly descended into puerpural psychosis I can believe that she wasn't in her right mind when she did what she did after hiding her pregnancy and giving birth alone. Don't understand the reasoning with it being murder and not neotaticide though.