Dissing The Dead

I have been meaning to do this for a while, but the original (and subsequent) post disappeared. But thanks to the sterling work of CoralPoetry, I have a copy of Terry Hamblin’s reprehensible and sickening attack on Sally Clark on the occasion of her premature death. So here we go, a fisk of the latest person to earn The Appalling Strangeness’s Worthless Cunt tag.

He begins:

“Sally Clark, the mother who was imprisoned for 3 years for killing her two infant sons, but later released following a campaign to discredit the medical witness against her”

Nope, following a campaign to prove her innocence. The discrediting of the medical witness was a pleasant and just side effect.

“has died under suspicious circumstances.”

Well, no, she died before her time. May not be usual. But is hardly unprecedented. Or that suspicious.

“News outlets are hinting at suicide”

Actually, the news outlets I saw quoted a family source who said Sally had been in poor health for some time, but don’t let details stand in your way, there, Terry.

“and that she was known to have had an alcohol problem and to have been a depressive.”

What, so everyone who is a depressive and/or an alcoholic commits suicide, then? Is that what you are trying to hint at? Because alcoholism and depression are very (and perhaps increasingly) common and to my knowledge, there has not been a sudden or proportionate rise in the number of suicides. Perhaps it is just easy for the likes of Terry to judge those who suffer from those problems. Rather than try to understand or empathise with them.

“So far response in the correspondence columns of the major newspapers has been that the ordeal of unjust imprisonment had driven her to it.”

Again, no proof of suicide. The general implication of the coverage and commentary on Sally’s premature death was that three years in prison, so soon after the deaths of her babies and with the stress and trauma of being classed as a child killer in one of our penal institutions, may have broken Sally. But fuck me, Terry, that would break all but the stoutest of hearts. How would you feel after the death of your children, being imprisoned for their murders, and then having to ensure the taunts of your fellow inmates and the constant threat of violence? I am guessing: not great.

“I wonder. Perhaps she was possessed by guilt that she really had killed her kids and remorse that she had brought down two eminent professors of paediatrics in getting the decision reversed.”

Already dealt with this. But I would reiterate - I hope Sally did not give a flying fuck about the ignorant medical charlatans who condemned falsely to two life sentences.

“I have not followed the case closely”

So why, *precisely*, do you feel you can comment on it so negatively just after Sally Clark died?

“but it seems to me that anyone who attacks motherhood is on a hiding to nothing, even if the mother is a lawyer.”

What?

What the fuck?

The false conviction of Sally Clark was not an attack on motherhood. It was an attack on Sally Clark. And as the woeful expert witness career of Roy Meadow shows, people are more than willing to convict mothers. Also, Sally was a solicitor, not a lawyer. Small point, I know, but still important, I would argue.

“There has been a prolonged and vituperative attack on the concept of Munchausen-by-proxy”

Which, by my understanding, is a symptom (albeit a highly destructive and awful symptom) of a wider mental disorder rather than a disease in itself. Making Munchausen’s Syndrome by Proxy the motive for double murder is a flawed diagnosis.

“and the doctor who videoed a mother harming her child in hospital was attacked for an intrusion into privacy.”

Yep, quick question, but what *precisely* does the above have to do with Sally Clark? It is an entirely separate incident, and entirely separate case. It has nothing to with the argument, and is irrelevant to the erroneous and flawed conviction of Sally Clark and her subsequent tragic death. The doctor in the case mentioned above was attacked for getting it right. The doctor(s) in the Sally Clark case got it wrong.

“It may be that Sally Clark was entirely innocent.”

Uh-huh, that was the conclusion of the court when the full facts of the case came to light.

“I suspect we will never know the truth.”

Perhaps not. So maybe we should go with the judgment of the court after, at the risk of repeating myself, the full facts of the case came to light.

“However, being declared innocent by a court doesn't make you innocent any more than being declared guilty by a court makes you guilty.”

Absolutely right. But what is your alternative, Terry? Because in this country, being declared innocent means you are innocent. For libel purposes, anyway.

“I rather suspect that more people are falsely declared innocent than are falsely declared guilty.”

Yep, the concept of “beyond reasonable doubt”, designed to save the innocent from circumstantial evidence. And if the full evidence had been known when Sally was first on trial I believe she would never have been convicted.

To publish this sort of hurtful, ignorant bullshit so soon after the death of someone is offensive in the extreme. I have no issue with calling people, such as our Dear Leader, total cunts. But – if they didn’t have far better things to do that construct retorts to a right-wing ranter – those people have the right of reply. I would never, ever, publish a mix of insults and total lies on the occasion of the death of the likes of Blair or Miliband.

And you know the reason why? I still see those people as human beings – stupid, flawed, fuckwitted twats, to be sure – but still human beings. So when they die, I will show them some respect, because they were humans at the end of the day, and will have loved ones who will mourn their passing. I can empathise with that. Because I still have some sort of emotional connection with the human race.

However, judging by these crass comments, Hamblin has no emotional connection to humanity. And it is the same as the cold, brutal emotional detachment from fellow humans that allowed Meadow to spout the statistical bollocks that allowed Sally Clark to be convicted in the first place.

Sally Clark and Sir Roy Meadow Part II

Well, I was going to do a determined fisk of Terry Hamblin's attack on Sally Clark just after her death, but there is a problem. Namely that the post has vanished. The url is inactive, and there is nothing on Hamblin's blog anymore. May be the negative reaction to his appallingly insenstive and crass comments was too much for Hamblin, and he has decided to go back to wittering on about technical medical issues. Which I suppose is a shame - I am not a fan of censorship in any form, even self-censorship.

However DK has quoted the most insulting of Hamblin's comments on Sally Clark, namely:

"Perhaps [Clark] was possessed by guilt that she really had killed her kids and remorse that she had brought down two eminent professors of paediatrics in getting the decision reversed."

Um, yeah, well, it would be worth pointing out that when the full results of the autopsy into the death of her second son were revealed and when Roy Meadow's statistics were dismissed Sally Clark's conviction was quashed. In other words, she was innocent. She didn't kill her kids. I accept the court may have got it wrong in setting her free as courts are fallible, but from my limited layman's knowledge it appears that Sally was innocent and her imprisonment was a gross miscarriage of justice. The decision was reversed based on evidence.

And I very much doubt that Sally was worried about bringing down two eminent professors not least because they actually brought themselves down. In Roy Meadow's case by getting it wrong time and time and time again.

But the simple truth is I don't care whether Hamblin thinks Clark murdered her children. Hell, he is entitled to his own viewpoint, so as far as I am concerned he can believe that evil pixies came from Outer Mongolia to kill those two boys. What I do object to is the timing - there is no way that Hamblin should have voiced his ill-informed and obnoxious opinions so soon after Sally Clark's death was announced. To do so simply heaps further insult and unhappiness on a family that has been torn apart by the death of children, then the unjust imprisonment of the mother, and then the premature death of the mother. I wonder how Hamblin would feel if he lost a loved one, only to find a blog somewhere that accuses that loved one of terrible crimes.

There were other parts of Hamblin's post that riled me, such as the veiled accusation that Clark may have killed herself (before any autopsy or inquest) and also the tenuous link between depression, alcoholism and child killing. But as the post doesn't exist anymore and I can't quote directly from it, I will leave it.

However I would note that Hamblin's writings displayed all the cold and clinical disassociation from reality and from human feelings and suffering that Sir Roy Meadow also showed when he helped innocent women be sent to prison with ill thought out and poorly researched statistics.

Sally Clark and Sir Roy Meadow

I woke up on Saturday with the usual hangover and an odd, nagging feeling at the back of my mind. I was thinking about Sally Clark, and how terrible it must have been for her to go to prison for murdering her sons, even though she was innocent. As nightmare scenarios go, I could think of little worse than losing your children, then your freedom, and then your career. To be a convicted child killer is one of the worst possible things to be in a prison.

Then I wandered into the newsagent’s and saw the newspaper headlines saying Sally Clark had died.

The cause of death will be determined by the coroner and by a post mortem, but whatever it reveals, I am inclined to believe the family when they say she "never fully recovered" from the effects of the "appalling miscarriage of justice". Prison almost certainly broke Sally Clark, and the tragedy is even her exoneration and freedom could not lessen the impact of the years spent inside for murdering her children.

Her death is tragic, and leaves a terrible taste in the mouth of any right thinking person. It is tempting to look for scapegoats – something I would normally try to avoid. But this time there is someone who is definitely to blame. The arrogant, ignorant Sir Roy Meadow. This man was supposed to be an expert witness – someone who offers the jury the truth about what happened to Sally’s Clark’s boys. But, as An Englishman’s Castle so eloquently puts it, Meadow seems to have lacked even a basic understanding of statistics. Parents have been imprisoned because of Meadow’s evidence and supposed expert testimony. You could argue that to err is human, and that Meadow is living proof. But we have to accept that we are responsible for mistakes in this life, and Meadow’s punishment (being struck off) was utterly lacking – not least because it has now been over-turned!

The people who have had to bear the responsibility and punishments for Meadow’s mistakes are those who were convicted and imprisoned because of his evidence. Meadow himself has not had to face up to the devastating impact his intellectual crassness has had. It is one of the great injustices of our time that Sally Clark should have to pay such a hefty price – ultimately perhaps even with her life – for Meadow’s blunder. Whist the person who made the mistake(s) escapes effectively without punishment.