Baby P's mother to be released

tickingbird

^There are some individuals who, clearly, are not fit to be trusted with children, their own or anyone else's^.

I agree with you Dickens on most of your points. However, in the case of the above point what do you suggest? I’ve been told that because, in this case, there’s a strong argument for sterilisation in my view, I’m irrational and therefore my arguments are to be ignored. Do we just allow women such as Connolly to carry on having child after child only to have them whisked away at birth? A baby conveyor belt with prospective adopters waiting in line?

The woman is obviously unfit to care for children and, of course, it’s awful that her own upbringing was inadequate but the priority for all agencies must be the children and the adults second. These cases maybe complex and challenging but this isn’t a social experiment. Children are being subjected to living hells and, in many cases, death must be merciful relief. It’s about time we started to be judgemental and put the child’s welfare far above the adult’s human rights. It’s not that these abusers don’t know it’s wrong. Their many ways of hiding the abuse from others indicates this.

There are women who have been wrongfully accused of harming killing their children and this has only come to light some years earlier. You simply cannot introduce a measure like that into a civilised society.

If Tracey Connolley has any more children they should be immediately placed for adoption. Their rights should be absolutely first and foremost.

Sorry I meant some years later.

Dickens I agree with this
I am very 'liberal' minded, but there is a point at which you have to say that something is just wrong, when it clearly is wrong. And leaving children in the care of those you've described, hoping for the best by keeping the family together, is wrong, on every level and in every sense of the word

I think this woman should most certainly be closely monitored if she is released and possibly educated about choosing not to have more children (I can’t cope with the concept of forced sterilisation but you get my drift)

Lucca

Dickens I agree with this
I am very 'liberal' minded, but there is a point at which you have to say that something is just wrong, when it clearly is wrong. And leaving children in the care of those you've described, hoping for the best by keeping the family together, is wrong, on every level and in every sense of the word

I think this woman should most certainly be closely monitored if she is released and possibly educated about choosing not to have more children (I can’t cope with the concept of forced sterilisation but you get my drift)

I think this woman should most certainly be closely monitored if she is released and possibly educated about choosing not to have more children (I can’t cope with the concept of forced sterilisation but you get my drift)

I don't quite know what the answer is - but like you, cannot support forced sterilisation. That opens up a can of worms, for obvious reasons.

Fortunately, she will reach an age when child-bearing will be impossible.

It's such an emotive subject, but I think one needs to attempt some rationality in spite of that. Making decisions based on emotion and anger is dangerous. We can be spurred by it, but not make decisions in the heat of such emotion.

Close monitoring is the best we can hope for. But deeper more fundamental changes in the way we treat people who are drug-addicted or alcohol addicted, damaged etc, is something maybe we should be looking at rather than closing the stable door after the horse has bolted.

I’m not being emotive or angry. I’m not talking about all abusers. There is no question of doubt in the case of Connolly. How you can be ok with babies being removed at birth but not with sterilisation isn’t rational.

12:19tickingbird

I agree she should be sterilised, she could be having baby after baby who would be placed in care and she might object to them being adopted, she obviously has rights (not sure about this). Imagine 18 years down the line discovering she is your birth mother how awful would that be.

I think for me its partly because the risk of misuse of sterilisation is very high, and also I am against all forms of procedures which go against bodily autonomy so sterilisation, compulsory vaccines etc. I dont think the removal of babies at birth is a good outcome, its why I am opposed to surrogacy, but sometimes you have to take the best of two awful choices.

She was released after 4 years!! Can anyone remember the injuries that child suffered? I can. Even Dominic Raab says she is 'pure evil'. 4 YEARS!! It beggars belief. She was then taken back in for selling naked pictures of herself on line and other such vile things.

Maudi, parents can oppose care plans, including those for adoption. The Children Act puts the welfare of the child at its centre. The parents will be legally represented, the child legally represented through the Children’s Guardian. Detailed assessments inform the Court. Every party puts its position to the Family Court Judge. There may be a contested final hearing. The Judge makes the decision based on the wishes, feelings and needs of the child.
The process may not be perfect but it’s certainly child centred.

Like many others, I have started to type something for this thread many times, then just given up.

But honestly - Dominic Raab says she is pure evil? Dominic Raab? Really? Dominic Raab, who is climbing on the politically expedient bandwagon that demonises Parole Boards and Social Workers for his own political advancement?

If she was released and taken back into custody four years ago, that was nine years ago. I have no idea what has happened in the intervening nine years, but I expect that the Parole Boards etc. do. Whereas Dominic Raab is playing to the braying mob.

I have read reams of stuff about this case since the announcement that this individual should be released.
It hasn't altered my thoughts that this person should never be released, ever.
Everyone has a different opinion on this, and I respect that people will think differently than I do.
Certainly this individual should never have another child. Heaven only knows what the children she has now think of her, how dreadful for them. I feel so sad when I think about them.
I was adopted (very lucky indeed to have the most wonderful adoptive parents) and there is a way of finding out about the adoption, even with legal "brick walls" in place, nothing is sacred I am afraid.
I agree with everything you have said tickingbird.

Thinking that people should never be released, ever, is certainly a viewpoint that the law allows for. People get full life terms.

Maybe that would be appropriate in this case, I don't know. But I know that I don't know enough about criminal justice or child protection to have a view on this. I also suspect that many people want her to stay in prison just for punishment. That is one view, certainly, but its not one I adhere to. We have to have a concept of rehabilitation. That may not be popular or easy to consider for some people, but we have to allow for it.

But forced sterilisation is a step too far. While we probably all agree that she should never again be in charge of children, this thread has gone down a one way street of assumptions; she's evil; she'll find a man; she'll get pregnant; she'll abuse the child. Then she'll have another one. Therefore, we better sterilise her.

There are ways to prevent her ever having access to children that do not involve the simple knee jerk reaction of "sterilise the bitch". We're not savages, even though she may be.

Baby P and little Jasmine Beckford are both examples used in my statutory NHS training, Safeguarding children, as to what can go wrong, how these wee ones got let down by the system.

I find it incredible they are letting her out, everyone is right- new name, life etc when her sons short life was so bad its is now part of a training program to hopefully stop this happening to others children.

tickingbird

I’m not being emotive or angry. I’m not talking about all abusers. There is no question of doubt in the case of Connolly. How you can be ok with babies being removed at birth but not with sterilisation isn’t rational.

How you can be ok with babies being removed at birth but not with sterilisation isn’t rational.

(a) My comment wasn't aimed at any particular poster.

(b) I didn't mention "babies being removed at birth".

As I said, I don't know what the answer is. I just have an opinion like everyone else, and I'm not an expert in any of these fields. Forced sterilisation is a slippery slope IMO - where do you draw the line; how are such decisions reached and by what criteria - and who do we select to make such decisions?

Sometimes, complex problems have easy answers in theory - but in practise they become more complex.

If we live in a civilised society we accept the construct that there is a price to pay for crimes committed. The discussion then turns to what price for which crime.

Child torture and murder is the worst of crimes. To inflict systemic, shrieking pain on a daily basis on to a defenceless child goes against every shred of human morality.

The people on this thread who think this woman has not paid sufficiently for what she did to her son are not a braying, howling lynch mob out for her blood but people who see total injustice in the leniency of her sentence.

The people on this thread who think this woman has not paid sufficiently for what she did to her son are not a braying, howling lynch mob out for her blood but people who see total injustice in the leniency of her sentence.

That may be true.

But there are people who want her murdered.

There are people who want her forcibly given a medical procedure.

There are people who think she should be left to rot.

That, whatever your opinion, is a braying mob.

Well said Nannee49. I don't want her murdered or sterilised but I do think she should not have been released after four years. Whether she inflicted the injuries herself or stood by while her son's fingernails were pulled out and his spine fractured, to name but some of the injuries, deserves longer than four years in prison.

I am trying, without success, to copy and paste a statement dated 6th May relating to the Secretary of State:

" 97 : The Secretary of State submits "The Parole Board failed to take any, or any proper account of the views of the Secretary of State, instead inaccurately giving the impression in the decision that the Secretary of State supported the prisoner's release. That was clearly not the case as evidenced by the Secretary of State's written submission ........"

What I was doing, was to try and find out how these decisions are reached, who has the power to overrule them etc.

^It was reported at the time that the then Attorney General considered referring the sentence to the Court of Appeal for being unduly lenient – but it seems no such referral was ever made, no doubt because the sentence was appropriate for the offence for which Connolly was actually convicted [which was ]“causing or allowing the death of a child or vulnerable person” – not murder or manslaughter.

I urge people to read this ...

davidallengreen.com/2022/05/the-lord-chancellors-extraordinary-tweet-about-the-tracey-connelly-case/

... and then consider what Raab's motives are for being disingenous.

Forced sterilisation is a slippery slope IMO - where do you draw the line; how are such decisions reached and by what criteria - and who do we select to make such decisions?

I completely agree. Nobody would want to leave a baby in the 'care' of someone like Connolly; but sterilisation is irreversible and the right to do it could be so easily misused, and the criteria could so easily shift from broadly acceptable to politically debatable to 'if someone like Dominic Raab thinks the mother is evil'.

Thanks Kate1949 perhaps this will open up discussion about exactly how, as a society, we determine what price is to be paid for this worst of all crimes.

Clearly, the current way isn't working. There's not the resources for prevention. Vile people are quietly running riot, taking the piss because if T. Connolly's anything to go by it's a few years inside then freedom to stroll down to the shops for a packet of fags in the sunshine, wind blowing their hair. And if the evil urges stir again what's to stop them?

Do rehabilitation programmes work? What percentage reoffend? How do we deal with it?

I don't know what the answer is. Who does? I just can't think of anything worse than harming children.

Doodledog

*Forced sterilisation is a slippery slope IMO - where do you draw the line; how are such decisions reached and by what criteria - and who do we select to make such decisions?*

I completely agree. Nobody would want to leave a baby in the 'care' of someone like Connolly; but sterilisation is irreversible and the right to do it could be so easily misused, and the criteria could so easily shift from broadly acceptable to politically debatable to 'if someone like Dominic Raab thinks the mother is evil'.

I honestly don't know what should be done with individuals like Connelly.

She led a grubby, hedonistic, drink-fuelled and chaotic lifestyle.

... from The Guardian...

the occupants of number 37 included an obese young woman, her four small children, a 6ft 4in muscular man, his brother and his brother's three children and 15-year-old girlfriend, three large dogs and a couple of snakes.

... and further

the two men, Steven Barker and his brother Jason Owen. Owen had been a member of the National Front; Barker was obsessed with Nazis.

Alarm bells should have been ringing and red flags waving to anyone remotely connected with them in the Care /Social Work sector, surely?

An earlier intervention might have prevented the suffering and ultimate death of this poor doomed child. What, ultimately, stopped the services from stepping in and taking the child out of that environment? That's what needs looking at.

I don't think that wondering about 'paying the price' is the right way to approach this. The important thing, surely, is stopping it from happening again.

I doubt that someone involved in such a terrible dynamic with a young child is thinking at all about the price to be paid if the worst happens and the baby dies. There has to be a lot more to it than that. I can no more imagine hurting any child, let alone my own, and would have done anything possible to stop anyone else from harming them either. What makes me (and most other parents) different from those who kill, or watch others hurt their children?

That's the question to ask, I think. What is is that gets in the way of a natural and overwhelming instinct to protect your child, and what can be done to stop whatever it is from taking hold? I suspect that at least some of it must be an inability to stand up to the partner who is usually involved. They seem to want the mother to show that she 'sides with' them, and can prove it by allowing them to hurt her child. If there could be a way to teach people self-esteem, and that their happiness/worth/whatever it is doesn't depend on someone else, that would probably prevent more child murders than concentrating on the penalties for doing so.