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.

It's obv never going to be the same, but I'm thinking of a new dad suffering from PND or maybe acting in shock after finding out on the spot he was a father. It'd never be seen as acceptable.

I don't know. She obviously has issues but I just can't get past the sickening abuse that baby endured tbh.

I wouldn't be surprised if it turns out she has some kind of neurotic personality disorder.

Being a new Dad doesn’t come close to carrying a pregnancy and giving birth. Have you been through either? Because I can’t believe you could for one moment compare them to the “shock” a man might experience. And men don’t suffer from PND because they haven’t given birth. There is literally no comparison. As someone said above, the physical process your body goes through during labour and childbirth is like nothing else. It is animalistic, and primeval, unbelievably painful and, for most women where the pregnancy is welcomed, it is indeed amazing. But it is also mind blowing, and weird and I for one felt like a wormhole had opened back to every ancestor that had ever bore a child before me. Thank goodness I was a frightened child experiencing all of that, alone.
I cannot understand why folks can’t see that a horrible crime took place but that there were also highly unusual and tragic mitigating factors that would normally affect the length of sentence given. Number one being that the defendant was a child, alone with no support, and below the age of consent therefore a victim of statutory rape.

men don’t suffer from PND because they haven’t given birth.

I don't believe giving birth is considered a requirement. The medical community seem 100% certain that a man can suffer from PND. Google it.

Same here. I said upthread how she was entirely alone. Neglected by her parents (even before dad was dying).

For all we know, this is the sentence she got whilst taking into account the mitigating factors.

If a father stamped on his newborns head and suffocated him, he'd be getting more than 12 years, it might be something like 18 (which is pathetic but that's what you'd expect).

Mitigation only goes so far. It's not getting you off the hook for killing an infant, even if your legally insane you're going to be institutionalised

Oh for goodness sake. Sure, a tiny number of men get depressed when their female partner gives birth to a baby. And now that’s included under the PND label too.
Post natal depression in its original sense and for the majority use case applies to women, who have actually been pregnant and given birth. And thanks for telling me to “google it”, the NHS pages are quite revealing in terms of how bad it can get.

The consensus in the medical community seems to be that male PND is a significant and very much overlooked issue. People forget that men also go through hormonal changes when becoming a parent.

The guy in the first article was actually a paediatrician but seems to have really lost it after becoming a father and 'started to see graphic images of committing violence to his child and himself'. I think we ignore these types of issues at our peril.

Male postnatal depression: Why men struggle in silence

https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20220601-male-postnatal-depression-why-men-struggle-in-silence

I didn’t even know men could get it’: the hidden impact of male postnatal depression

https://amp.theguardian.com/society/2023/may/22/i-didnt-even-know-men-could-get-it-the-hidden-impact-of-male-postnatal-depression

Antenatal and postnatal depression: fathers and all non-birthing parents

https://raisingchildren.net.au/grown-ups/looking-after-yourself/anxiety-depression-before-after-birth/antenatal-postnatal-depression-men-non-birthing-parents

Postnatal depression in dads and co-parents: 10 things you should know

https://www.nct.org.uk/life-parent/emotions/postnatal-depression-dads-and-co-parents-10-things-you-should-know

I appreciate that I'm taking this off topic so I won't continue with that tangent, but I thought some might find it interesting.

PND might work then for a man’s defence. Not in the case of a female child though. Something must have gone awry here, or else the media isn’t publishing all the facts of the case, it just doesn’t add up.

It seems that roughly 15% of men and women experience PND so the frequency is pretty similar - some studies say 13-19% of women.

Obv it's not exactly comparable as I still believe women are more likely to face trauma from a difficult birth, and that the physical trauma we endure can obv lead to mental trauma. But on the other hand, men are already much more predisposed to aggression/violence and higher levels of testosterone affect the brain's processing of fight/flight situations. And there's the fact that the mother as well as the baby is a potential victim with a mentally unstable male partner exhibiting potentially violent behaviour.

I think what went awry is the fact mothers aren’t supposed to ever harm their babies. The punishment is more severe for a girl because while we can accept men are violent, a part of us cannot comprehend girls being violent. So any girl that is violent is deemed evil, a monster, unnatural. Whereas men benefit from the boys will be boys leniency.

Is this really true though? I thought women received lesser penalties for the same crimes? It's like no.1 on every list that misogynist men make - male suicide, male homelessness, higher legal penalties, etc.

Depends on the crime. Most crimes, yes women get lesser sentences. But when it comes to mothers killing their infants/children, it goes the other way.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2009/sep/24/rekha-kumari-baker-sentencing

A quick Google seems to suggest that women tend to be sentenced with more leniency than men. Interestingly, though, a recurring suggestion for this is actually male paternalistic bias - when more female judges are introduced we see less sentencing disparity.

There also seems to be evidence that women are punished more harshly for crimes outside of accepted gender norms, which aligns with what some posted have said above - I didn't post that study as I accidentally closed the link and can't be arsed to find it again.

A 2001 University of Georgia study found substantial disparity in the criminal sentencing that men and women received "after controlling for extensive criminological, demographic, and socioeconomic variables". The study found that in US federal courts, "blacks and males are... less likely to get no prison term when that option is available; less likely to receive downward departures [from the guidelines]; and more likely to receive upward adjustments and, conditioned on having a downward departure, receive smaller reductions than whites and females".[9]

In 2005 Max Schanzenbach found that "increasing the proportion of female judges in a district decreases the sex disparity" in sentencing which he interprets as "evidence of a paternalistic bias among male judges that favors female offenders".[10]

In 2006 Ann Martin Stacey and Cassia Spohn found that women receive more lenient sentences than men after controlling for presumptive sentence, family responsibilities, offender characteristics, and other legally relevant variables, based on examination of three US district courts.[11]

In 2012 Sonja B. Starr from University of Michigan Law School found that, controlling for the crime, "men receive 63% longer sentences on average than women do," and "[w]omen are…twice as likely to avoid incarceration if convicted", also based on data from US federal court cases.[12][13]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentencing_disparity

Our results indicate that women receive more lenient sentences even after controlling for circumstances such as the severity of the offense and past criminal history.

https://bakadesuyo.com/2010/08/do-women-receive-lighter-prison-sentences-tha/

The judge’s full sentencing remarks are reproduced here:

https://www.itv.com/news/central/2023-06-26/judges-remarks-as-teenage-mum-jailed-for-killing-newborn?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1687801650-1

Thanks fishfinger.

Two aggravating factors that disproportionately affect a woman- mother responsibility to child, and the vulnerability of a child in the first hour of life.

Premeditated because she knew for an hour of labour what was going on. I was mainly thinking 'oh god, please let it be over soon' for the last hour of my labour.

I don't think anyone in active labour has much capacity for premeditation. Maybe something like 'he's going to have a vasectomy' or 'I'm never having sex again'.

I found the summing up balanced in that it noticed the doctors fixed mindset on her guilt.

Shit, she'd been a teenager for about 2 years when she gave birth. She's been on remand (bail?) for twice that long.

She was not even 15 and a half, less mature than others her age, and lived under the weight of 'don't be a nuisance' her whole life.

How did she manage labour that quietly? A lifetime of 'not being a nuisance, I've got enough on my plate without you causing trouble, don't upset your father...'

You know this argument could be turned on it’s head and used to justify a position whereby only male judges can be considered objective and therefore suitable to deal with these cases, right?
let’s not go there. It’s a stupid place.

Some useful discussion on the actual approach to sentencing for murder here:
https://www.sentencingcouncil.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/FINAL-Murder-sentencing-leaflet-for-web1.pdf

The judge in this case took as a starting point a nine year tariff; so was more lenient with her than these guidelines would suggest

I am not sure an appeal against sentence is getting off the ground here, but let’s see.

@pickledandpuzzled

The guilt of the fundamental abuse of a mother to a child Quote

Refers to the facts that she was the only person on this earth that new Stanley, as the mother.

Nobody else had a single chance to protect him.

He didn't go to school. Nursery. No other relatives new of him. No health visitor checking in.

His entire life was in her hands after he slid out of the birth canal.

Judge is 100% right and he put it very well.

If that affects a woman unfairly, what can you say? It's not any less true, is it. However vulnerable she is, she was the mother to that baby and the person that should have sought help or at least not murdered him.

It would be an appeal against the conviction for murder to be reduced to infanticide anyway.

They should appeal otherwise with a case like this, it’s setting a precedent that puts infanticide firmly out of reach of all adult women and most other teen girls. There aren’t many situations that could match the isolation and trauma of what Mayo went through as a young 15yr old (not even old enough to consent to sex) and to still be convicted of murder? Well there goes infanticide as a form of manslaughter for killing a baby. There will be no accommodation for how women can be mentally destroyed after the trauma of childbirth. This could be a watershed case.

To highlight how 12yrs is ridiculous, in March 2020, an adult man found the isolation of lockdown hard and his wife said ‘get over it’. His “lockdown trauma” resulted in a 5yr sentence for manslaughter due to rage/anger for killing his wife because she said “get over it.”

”Anthony Williams, 70, who was on Monday found not guilty of murder, appeared for sentencing at Swansea crown court after admitting manslaughter by reason of diminished responsibility. The judge, Paul Thomas, said it was a “tragic case on several levels”, but in his view Williams’ mental state was “severely affected at the time”.
“In transcripts of police interviews read out in his trial, Williams admitted to detectives that he “literally choked the living daylights” out of his wife. He said he had found lockdown “really hard” just five days into the UK-wide restrictions and felt depressed, and told police he had attacked his wife after she told him to “get over it”.”

Sorry forgot the link!
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/feb/18/anthony-williams-killed-wife-act-of-great-violence-jailed-for-five-years