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THE GUARDIAN |
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COMMENT
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There are no happy
endings when the state comes
home When officials intervene in family life it's emotional politics that count Polly
Toynbee What worse fate could
befall a woman than to see her
babies die - and then find
herself wrongly sentenced to
life imprisonment for their
murder? After Sally Clark,
Trupti Patel and Angela
Cannings, other women will be
freed for murders they did not
commit. Harriet Harman
announced in the Commons
yesterday that 54 parents in
prison are to get an urgent
review of their cases, with
many getting quick bail, while
15 cases in progress may be
dropped and 258 old
"murders" will be
re-opened. Donna Anthony is one
of those still locked up: she
is in Durham lifers' wing,
where no one speaks to her
except other convicted killers
hissing "BKB" - Baby
Killing Bitch - at her as she
passes. She was accused of
killing her 4-month-old son in
1997 and her 11-month-old
daughter a year earlier - on
the evidence of the
discredited Professor Sir Roy
Meadow, now, belatedly, under
investigation by the General
Medical Council. All these
mothers have, in their time,
been monstered in the very
same press that now turns on
Meadows. But one important
question has been ignored in
all the uproar. Even if these
women had killed their babies,
what were they doing on the
lifers' wing of high-security
jails anyway? They are a
danger to no one, yet they are
regarded as so exceptionally
wicked that even other killers
shun them. Why did the press,
(until the last days of the
Sally Clark case), revel in
their sinister wickedness?
Their offence was seen as an
assault on the sacred: a
mother alone in her home
secretly stifling her baby was
seen as a crime against
nature. Does locking up killer
mothers defend motherhood
itself? Curiously, it does the
opposite, suggesting that only
harsh punishment deters other
mothers from smothering their
babies too. The law has always
recognised the tragic
phenomenon of infanticide. It
does not carry a mandatory
life sentence: indeed, mothers
might not need to be jailed at
all under it. But it has one
fatal drawback: a woman can
only be charged with
infanticide if she confesses
her crime. Most of the mothers
now jailed were pressed by
their lawyers to plead guilty
to infanticide in order to
avoid jail. But they didn't.
This strongly suggests -
though may not prove - their
innocence. If they are guilty,
preferring life in prison to
confession suggests some deep
psychological inability to
believe what has happened.
This strange crime springs
from sickness of mind,
post-natal depression, an
extreme derangement that
should not be treated as a
criminal matter at all but as
a medical tragedy. The government is
left in a quandary about what
to do. One inquiry, headed by
Helena Kennedy QC, is drawing
up a national protocol to
ensure better ways to
investigate child deaths, with
professional teams in every
area. But there is a critical
shortage of paediatric
pathologists with special
skills in infants - so dead
children will need to be
ferried around the country for
autopsies. Another inquiry by
the Royal College of
Paediatricians is trawling
through all the available
forensic research to explore
the reliability of existing
knowledge. Is there
unequivocal proof on the
causes of particular types of
bruising and other injuries to
children? Does anyone know for
certain how old a bruise is?
Can courts be sure an injury
is a hit not a fall? The more
they look, they harder they
are finding it. After the fall of
Meadow, judges will no longer
have blind confidence in a
professor or a "Sir"
of unquestioned eminence.
Meanwhile, the medics shy away
from anything to do with the
law. Every NHS Trust is
supposed to have a designated
paediatrician responsible for
child protection - training
nurses and doctors to look for
abuse and what to do if they
suspect it. But 60% of these
posts are vacant. "Damned
if they do, damned if they
don't, no one wants to do
it," says the Royal
College. Many paediatricians
who give evidence become
targets of pressure groups. Behind all this is
the emotional politics of the
family. The pendulum of
press-poisoned public opinion
swings from extreme to
extreme. Sometimes the state
dangerously interferes with
the sanctity of family life,
at other times it negligently
fails in its care of the
nation's children. The moral
right likes to have it both
ways, with the state always at
fault. Victoria Climbie-type
cases allow them to point to
gross neglect by social
workers, their bêtes noirs,
with a subtext that all
taxpayers' money is wasted on
do-gooders: what society needs
is a good dose of law and
order. But then in the
Cleveland inquiry, where
over-zealous doctors were
accused of taking too many
children into care after
evidence of sex abuse, the
state became an officious
child-snatcher, seizing
children from the bosom of
their innocent families. (In
the event, less publicised,
many of the Cleveland children
did turn out to have been
abused.) Now the Meadow cases
again get the right's blood
boiling over the excesses of
state intervention. What the right likes
is families to be left alone.
Tory policy over its 18 years
in power strove to keep the
state from crossing the
threshold of family life -
eager to give money from the
state into fathers wallets,
not mothers purses; keen to
deny the harm that occurs in
families; angry at any attempt
to stop grown men walloping
three-year-olds, and calling
it "smacking" in the
name of parental discipline.
Tory policy had the advantage
of being cheap: no nursery
schools, no childcare, no nosy
nannying from social workers,
mothers responsible for
everything, the state for as
little as possible. The left
is inclined to agree with
Larkin. It wants to intervene
as much as it can afford to:
giving children equal
opportunities means offering
help, education, child care,
parenting classes and Sure
Start from birth. But there is not much
ideology in the nightmare
facing the government now. The
tidal wave of cases will not
be murders but the thousands
of children taken into care on
what may be flawed evidence.
Old scars will be prised open
where children were wrongly
adopted years ago. It will
take more than the Judgment of
Solomon to decide what is
right in cases of children
long apart from their natural
families. Already lawyers for
wronged parents are sharpening
their arguments: the innocent
deserve to get their children
back. The Children Act may
make the interests of the
child paramount - but it may
be less clear what their
long-term interests are, even
if they have been happily
settled elsewhere for years.
Having written a book on
adopted children in search of
their natural families, I
agree with Margaret Hodge's
hope that where families
cannot be reunited, at least
contact could be
re-established. There may be few
happy endings - colossal law
suits loom with heavy claims
for compensation for parents'
and childrens' loss of family
life. But the heart-rending
dilemmas of when the state
should take children away will
never be finally resolved.
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