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.

As she has been convicted of murder she has to receive a life sentence. The only question is how much of it she serves in prison.
the jury deliberated for a very long time it seems. They clearly found their job hard but did it conscientiously. I think we should respect their verdict, but it seems they did not find it quite as easy to leap to the conclusion of cold, calculating brutality as some on this thread do.
let us face it, if she were genuinely calculating she would have acted very differently and covered her tracks much more competently. The course of conduct suggests to me she was in blind panic.

I expect there will be an appeal. I'm mystified why 'infanticide' wasn't the verdict, as it has been for almost every other case with similar circumstances.

I’m not disputing what the jury thought because they were obviously provided with in depth information in order to come to a conclusion. I’m stating my opinion of someone who’s read multiple articles, that’s all🙂

The answer to that will lie in evidence the jury heard and we have not. They deliberated for over 8 hours. They clearly considered the matter with great care and conscientiousness. We are indebted to them; it can’t have been pleasant.

No, I don't envy the jury or anyone involved.

I was wondering if there was a thread on here about this, as I thought it was an unbelievably sad tale when I read it, especially juxtapositioned against the abortion case.

Interesting that the hard-pressed judicial system has had time to prosecute both these women. I can't see how it was in the public interest to prosecute the 15 year old. Hopefully the sentencing in this case will take into account her age and consider properly whether her family really would have supported her (which was the assertion in the article I read about the case).

As for comparisons with Begum, words fail me.

Meanwhile the rapist of a 13 yr old in Scotland got community service because he was under the age of 25. I despair Indeed. The judicial system is far more unforgiving of female criminals (and then puts male bodied people in prison with them).

Has her rapist been convicted or is it just this girl continuing to suffer the consequences of his actions?

Do you seriously equate a sadist with a girl in mental and hormonal turmoil after giving birth?

It’s not about age. He wouldn’t have just given birth, with all its effects on mind and hormones even when it’s a longed-for birth.

Do you seriously equate a sadist with a girl in mental and hormonal turmoil after giving birth?

Agree they're not equal, but let's also remember what has happened is serious. You can't just let people off the hook for that.

Hormones and fear of telling parents just doesn't cut it. If she'd abandoned the baby alive, it would have been very different to a brutal killing.

Interesting discussion of the history of the infanticide laws, and their relationship to the more recent law of diminished responsibility, here: https://www.counselmagazine.co.uk/articles/100-years-of-the-infanticide-act

I'm on page 4 and cant believe that posters are using the arguement if it had been a man.

The point of the crime of infantacide is it allows for the possibility that the impact of giving birth has created a state of mind where the mother isn't thinking clearly or is reacting on an emotional rather then intellectual level.

So please stop with this I dint therefore nobody else would. Its totally irrelevant.

If however you feel that the legal right to argue that the act of giving birth might ie not always, mean that a new mother does not behave rationally, then as I said earlier you should campaing to have removed as a lesser crime than murder.

The issue here is why the CPS or the judge didn't say the charge was infantacide when there are so many cases of women who have done the same of worse have been charged with infantacide.

Juries aren't supposed to go on their emotions, they are supposed to use the law. Admittedly I haven't seen anything written about what her defence said.

So its actually irrelevant what any of you think emotionally or from the positions I've never done it so it has to be wrong, it is about the law.

Infantacide wasn't evented to say women could get away with murder. For heavens sake.

The issue is has the law as it currently stand been applied properly.

Several posters have mentioned birth hormones as a mitigating factor.

Hormones released during labour are oxytocin (also known as the love hormone) endorphins (calming and relaxing) and prolactin (also known as the mothering hormone)

The instant love women often describe for their newborn is a result of these hormones.

The female body is incredibly clever at ensuring that women feel an instant connection to and need to protect their helpless infant

What hormones do other posters think caused this woman to commit infanticide/murder??

Tragic.

Thank god I was never a pregnant at 14, afraid of my dad, with a mum whose focus was on appeasing her dying husband.

Thank god I never endured a pregnancy overshadowed by my dying father, then gave birth alone, in silence at night and had to work out what to do next.

Awash with stress hormones and pain and fear, no idea what to do except avoid bothering my poor mum and raging dad.

She wasn't presented with a wrapped, wiped baby having been supported by a midwife reassuring her everything was ok. She was faced with a red, bloody, slimy creature she had no idea what to do about.

I think people forget how ignorant a 15yr old can be- I'd never held a baby, or even seen one close up. Certainly not a very new one.

It's horrific, it really is, that poor baby, and I'm also horrified about what the girl endured and how she'll have to live with what she did forever.

Wildly swinging hormones, Holly.
Cortisol and adrenaline from the stress and pain of what she endured.

AgathaSpencerGregson · Today 16:21
Interesting discussion of the history of the infanticide laws, and their relationship to the more recent law of diminished responsibility, here: https://www.counselmagazine.co.uk/articles/100-years-of-the-infanticide-act.co.uk/articles/100-years-of-the-infanticide-act

Thank you that is very interesting. It helps explain the thinking behind the Infanticide Act and how it provides a different case from one of ‘diminished responsibility’ though people are failing to understand this and wrongly applying ‘diminished responsibility’ tests to cases which should be considered on the discrete basis of a temporary dissociated state which is often seen in cases of Infanticide, and which was originally understood as being part of the phenomenon.

So can people now use the presence of cortisol and adrenaline in their blood as mitigating factors to violent crime?

I can't imagine what sort of mental state that child had to be in to be able to kill a baby in the horrific way she did. My 15 year old daughter stresses about killing spiders, doesn't like cutting up raw chicken and panics about tests at school. I can only imagine where her brain would need to be at to be able to do anything like this. This girl must have been terrified.

I also find myself asking where the father is. This baby had 2 parents. One is now being sentenced for murder, the other is where exactly? He knew he had sex with this girl (statutory rape?), potentially making a baby and therefore surely bears some responsibility for ensuring the safety of his child?

@Holly60

Absolutely not but it maybe helps us to understand how this girl might have been feeling

When Giving Birth Leads to Psychosis, Then to Infanticide
https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2018/09/postpartum-psychosis-infanticide-when-mothers-kill-their-children/569386/

Infant is a term used clinically for a child up to the age of 1 year. Infanticide is killing of a child under 12 months of age by a mother who has not fully recovered from the effects of pregnancy, giving birth and lactation, and suffers some degree of mental disturbance. The reason or the cause for infanticide is the altered mental state of the mother. https://journals.lww.com/jfsm/Fulltext/2017/03010/Infanticide__A_Concept.8.aspx

The majority of women who committed neonaticide, infanticide or filicide regretted the act and regretted not seeking help from family and healthcare professionals.
Women who committed neonaticide, infanticide or filicide in the main had complex circumstances characterised by poverty, abusive relationships, poor family and social support or over reliance on family supports and mental health issues.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/jpm.12828

Yes. I wonder how the jury was directed and if there might be an appeal.

I wonder if some of the posters on this thread would react to a 15 year old girl who had been raped and responded by violently attacking the rapist would be coming up with these blandishments about, at 15 you are old enough to know what is right and what is wrong, why didn't she tell her family, why didn't she just leave.

And it is because of these societal judgement attitudes that so many are arguing for rape trials not to be heard by a jury, because they think what they think is the law rather than educating themselves about the law itself.

Because like it or not court cases are run in line with existing law and levels of proof, not on the basis of juries disapproving on someone.

I have total empathy for how she was feeling, poor girl. I sincerely hope she gets to support to process what happened to her.

No matter what her fear and panic for herself was, she violently attacked and killed an innocent infant.

So its actually irrelevant what any of you think emotionally or from the positions I've never done it so it has to be wrong, it is about the law

But equally people are saying she shouldn't be charged with murder based on their own emotions. Emotion is always a part of criminal trials, it's inseparable from either side.

A baby dying in one manner might be 'worse' than another. That's emotion.

It's also why she might get a shorter sentence, so I wouldn't dismiss it so hastily.

I’m sorry for what happened to her but she did a wicked and horrific thing. The poor baby. There are always reasons why people do awful things but the fact is a crime was committed. She does need punishment and also help for what happened to her.