2 Babies die after vaccination and their mother languishes in jail

This is perhaps one of the most tragic aspects of current vaccine policy. Imagine, you vaccinate your child, he or she dies from a vaccine reaction, and you go to jail. What could be worse? - SM

http://www.sunday-times.co.uk/section/0,,9001,00.html

2 Babies die after vaccination and their mother languishes in jail

SUNDAY JANUARY 20 2002

I am afraid Sally is giving up hope in prison

Stephen Clark continues to fight to prove the innocence of his

wife Sally, jailed for the murder of two of her children

In a few days’ time David Blunkett, the home secretary, is

expected to set a sentence tariff for Sally Clark, the solicitor jailed for

the murder of her two sons when they were no more than a few weeks old,

writes Margarette Driscoll.

Though the sentence set in court was mandatory — life — the home

secretary has the discretion to vary the actual time served. He is currently

mulling over a thick file of submissions from family, friends and expert

witnesses.

Ever since the jury reached a majority verdict of guilty at

Chester crown court in November 1999, there have been public and private

misgivings about the case among lawyers, doctors and families who have

suffered the tragedy of losing a child through cot death.

The Clarks have received hundreds of letters of support from the

public, many of which are included in the Blunkett file. The unease in the

legal profession was evident last year when a disciplinary panel of the Law

Society decided to suspend Clark; a solicitor convicted of such a serious

crime would normally be automatically struck off.

More than two years after the trial Sally Clark still vehemently

protests her innocence, but having lost an appeal against conviction last

October and spent her third Christmas in jail, she is downcast. “She told

her father recently she felt numb; she couldn’t even get angry any more,”

says her husband, Stephen. “I am afraid she is giving up hope.”

The wheels of justice grind infuriatingly slowly. The Criminal

Cases Review Commission is to look at Clark’s case but she is at the back of

a long queue of potential miscarriages of justice.

One encouraging sign is that the commission has ordered the

Crown Prosecution Service to preserve tissue samples remaining from the

babies’ post-mortem examinations. The family hope they can be used for new

tests, based on research into genetic factors in cot death completed since

the trial, and other tests that might produce an explanation for the babies’

deaths.

A new study by the Royal College of General Practitioners also

shows an intriguing correlation between the babies’ deaths and national

incidence of lung infection. Christopher, Clark’s first son, died just short

of a five-year peak. Her second son Harry died at a lower peak, but one that

the author of the study still regards as “statistically significant”.

Christopher was originally certified dead of a respiratory infection.

Meanwhile, Stephen, 40, juggles a new job with a London law firm

with life as a single father to the couple’s surviving son, who is now

three. Every week he takes his son to visit Sally at Bullwood Hall prison in

Essex. “When he goes in he runs to her. He sits on her knee and reads a

book,” says Stephen. “For his sake she’s keeping herself going; he needs his

mum. But it must kill her every time we leave.”

His son talks about prison as “Mummy’s house”. “He’s started

asking why Mummy can’t come to our house,” says Stephen.

“It’s getting to the stage where I am going to have to talk to

him about all this and I haven’t got a clue what I’m going to say.”

Last year Stephen left his job in Manchester. Fighting the case

and preparing the appeal had all but wiped them out. He estimates that the

case has cost the couple £250,000 — “everything we worked for” — even though

several legal and medical experts have given free advice.

The house and car had to be sold to pay legal fees and when he

moved south, to be near Sally, it meant starting again. One consolation was

being offered jobs by several City law firms. The fact that they were

willing to take him on despite knowing about Sally was a welcome boost to

morale.

Sally has never seen the house that he and his son live in now,

but she helped choose it, poring over estate agents’ details. Stephen took

paint charts into prison so she could choose. They picked furniture

together, from brochures.

Sally also chooses all her son’s toys and clothes. “Some time

soon we’ll have to start thinking about schools so I’ll be taking in Ofsted

reports,” says Stephen. “I want her to stay involved in every aspect of our

lives. Our house is very much her house; it’s got her stamp all over it.

When she is released I want her to step into a life that she is familiar and

comfortable with. Keeping a ‘normal’ family life going despite everything is

a way of fighting back.”

Clark was convicted of murder without anyone being able to say

definitively how either baby died. The prosecution maintained that both

babies had sustained physical injuries, deliberately inflicted, even though

none was apparent when they were admitted to hospital. The defence argued

that the pathology that alleged such injuries was flawed and that any

injuries that did exist were due to vigorous efforts at resuscitation.

There were nine days of complex and conflicting medical

evidence, some of which even Stephen, an experienced lawyer, struggled to

understand. But in just a few minutes’ discussion of cot death Professor Roy

Meadow, a world-renowned expert in child abuse, told the court that the

chances of two such deaths occurring in a non-smoking, middle-class

household such as the Clarks’ was one in 73m. Clark’s family, and other

independent observers, believe the statistic — easily understood but wrong —

sealed her fate.

The daughter of a senior police officer, Sally, 37, met Stephen,

a corporate lawyer, when they both worked in the City. In 1993 they moved to

Manchester, where they joined a leading law firm and bought Hope Cottage, a

pretty, detached house in Wilmslow. It was there that Christopher died, in

December 1996, aged 11 weeks.

Stephen was out for the evening. Sally went to make a cup of tea

at 9.30 and says when she returned, Christopher had turned grey. A

post-mortem examination concluded that he had died of a respiratory

infection.

Just over a year later, in January 1998, tragedy struck again,

at the same time of evening, when Sally was alone with eight-week-old Harry.

Stephen was in the kitchen making a bottle for him when he heard Sally

scream from upstairs. This time, the pathologist was suspicious. Two months

later, Sally was charged with murder.

Last year a manslaughter trial in which a dentist and an

anaesthetist were accused of killing a five-year-old girl collapsed when

Alan Williams, a pathologist, admitted having made a mistake. Williams was

the man who raised the alarm about Clark. Meadow recently acknowledged that

crucial evidence given by him on whether one of the babies had been

smothered was based on data his secretary had shredded.

Clark faces many years in jail but even some of those who

believe her guilty doubt whether this is the right place for her. In three

recent cases of infanticide, the mothers were not jailed.

Stephen refuses to entertain the possibility that she could have

been involved. “Sally would never have harmed our babies,” he says. “She

loved them.” He has a faint hope that if the home secretary is guided by the

principles of deterrence and retribution he could conclude that both have

been satisfied by “time served”.

But experience tells him a happy outcome is unlikely. “I’ve lost

my faith in the system,” he says. “If this could happen to us, people with

friends, a bit of money and intelligence, it could happen to anyone. At law

school I used to wonder how anyone ever got a conviction, the standard of

proof was so high. Now I know it’s all a game about what’s admissible as

evidence. It’s not about discovering the truth.”

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January 20, 2002

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