There are probably very few
people in Britain who are unaffected by the death of Sally Clark, a young
mother whose two young children died suddenly and if that were not enough for
her to cope with, was then charged and convicted of killing them and was
imprisoned for three years before reason and logic finally prevailed.
Some have already said that
Sally died of a broken heart and there is probably a great deal of truth in
that, whilst others are pointing accusing fingers at the individuals who gave
evidence against her and who are now seen as contributory agents in her death.
Probably the nearest to the
truth is that Sally was killed by an entire system which is deeply-flawed,
erratic, and dysfunctional. That system is the British Child Protection system
and the associated legal and police systems.
The individuals within this
system begin with the belief that they are in an `Us and Them’ situation. `Us’
being those who are a part of the system and `Them’ being the entire British
Public. They comfort each other and try to convince the rest of the population
by claiming there is a vast amount of undetected child abuse happening within
our society, despite the facts and statistics showing otherwise. They see
themselves as the `Child Savers’ who must remove all children where there is
suspected abuse and place them forever in the homes of strangers. Their
natural families are stripped of all rights and responsibilities for their
children, often because of highly questionable accusations of a single act of
abuse.
There are extremists in the
system who have strong influence over the belief system and convince others
that unproven and scientifically fraudulent theories of child abuse have some
form of professional merit, and that facts of child abuse don’t matter when
placed against opinions of expert figures in the medical and social work
professions. Although it has been shown in many instances that the agencies
involved in the child protection system have failed abysmally in working
together, they are highly collusory when they find a prey of an innocent
parent who they can bully, browbeat, and bulldoze into submission.
Confirmatory bias abounds where one individual in one agency can exert
enormous influence and pressure on others to conform to their beliefs in
abuse, and very often with little or no factual evidence to support their
contentions and suppositions. Some Judges have become a part of this collusory
and collaboratory part of the system and readily `rubber stamp’ the beliefs of
the system, ignoring the need for facts to prove guilt.
The system suspects and accuses
anyone and everyone and even their own but for the most part pick on the weak
and defenceless parents, especially those who have no ready access to legal
advice and representation or the interventions of the media. It was a
significant turning point in the Cleveland Scandal in 1987 when doctors and
social workers began to involve middle class families who had access to
lawyers, the media, and a Member of Parliament.
Sally Clark was herself a lawyer
and it could be argued was herself part of the system and perhaps this was
their greatest mistake in picking on one of their own. Someone who could fight
back with all the strength at her disposal and a family to support her
entirely and with their own considerable influence.
However even Sally and her
powerful legal team and supporters were defeated by the aplomb, the hubris,
and the Courtroom expertise of the Expert Medical Witnesses, despite their
evidence being seriously flawed and that important medical evidence of a
serious infection and the probable adverse effects of vaccines being the most
likely causes of the children’s deaths but such factual evidence was withheld
or was not sufficiently explored.
Individuals within the system
have an obsessive belief that they are always `Right’ and cannot accept when
they are wrong or have done wrong even when it is totally proven. Then they
find someone else to blame or say, “Just get on with your lives” and forget
about it. That was there attitude towards the injustices they inflected on
Sally Clark and her family.
Sally Clark is dead. But for
hundreds, possibly thousands, of children and their parents the pain and
devastation of their lives goes on. Condemned and stigmatised by an erratic
and self-serving system and for many never to see each other again. For these
parents like Sally, their children are gone too, but are still alive, living
somewhere with strangers and they are haunted by memories and an aching in the
heart. They look at every child in the Shopping Mall and wonder – “She is the
same age as my daughter would be – could it be?.”. “Is that a familiar
smile?”.
The pain goes on and on. Shed
your tears for Sally Clark but also shed tears for the hundreds of Mums and
Dads who continue to live with their pain and suffering.
But most of all, let your anger
rise and focus on the politicians who are ignoring what is happening in
Britain in their names and our names where families are being destroyed daily
and children are suffering even greater abuse by a system which supposedly is
there to protect them.
