Lunacy of the law

The Argus began campaigning almost three years ago for a change in the law.

Local MPs, Sussex Police, Brighton and Hove councillors, the NSPCC and families of the murdered have joined the effort but cruel carers are still escaping justice.

Des Turner is a loyal Labour MP who rarely takes swings at his own government. Today, however, the Brighton Kemp Town member has taken his gloves off.

He is writing to Home Secretary David Blunkett to ask him in no uncertain terms: "What is taking you so long?"

Mr Turner said: "Children are dying or being seriously injured at the hands of their guardians as I speak and the failure of the judicial system to properly punish those responsible has got to stop.

"A new law could be an effective deterrent and could well save innocent young lives."

Two Sussex couples suspected of killing children in their care escaped prosecutions for murder in recent years because of the loophole.

A Brighton couple, jailed for cruelty to five children, were originally tried for murdering three babies but the case collapsed in 2000.

Murder charges against Simon and Michelle McWilliam whose adoptive son John Smith, four, died in their care, failed at the committal stage.

The Portslade couple were jailed for cruelty last year but John's family continues to fight for justice.

The murder charges failed because it could not be proved which of the parties inflicted fatal injuries.

Justice Moses, deliberating on the Brighton case, said there was no rational basis on which the jury could decide who was guilty and whether both were at the scene when each baby died.

He said: "It is better both be acquitted than one wrongly convicted. You could debate all night the rights and wrongs of it but that is the law and there are very good reasons for it."

The reasoning was backed at an NSPCC conference on the subject at Cambridge University last weekend.

Professor John Spencer, of Cambridge's law faculty, explained radical changes put forward were unlikely to succeed. Switching the burden of proof to defendants, for instance, ran foul of the rule "innocent until proven guilty".

But Alison Kerr, chief crown prosecutor for Lincolnshire, suggested offenders could be the subject of a different charge, manslaughter based on gross negligence, which is an offence that carries a life sentence.

The charge might not require prosecutors to prove which of the two guardians committed the fatal blow but would make the second person culpable by not intervening or seeking immediate help for the child.

The charge has yet to be tested in courts but Mr Turner is asking whether the Home Office has even considered the idea.

Mr Turner, The Argus, Sussex Police detective Malcolm Bacon and a concerned Brighton mother Sandra Reid met with then Home Secretary Jack Straw in his London office on April 13, 2000.

Mr Straw responded by suggesting a new law of killing by neglect, carrying a 14-year maximum sentence. He promised to refer the issue to Lord Justice Auld who was investigating legal reforms at the time.

Nothing came of either proposal and, as Mr Turner pointed out, there is no reference to the issue on the Government's latest White Paper on the law.

Mr Turner wants answers, as do the likes of Mrs Reid, a Brighton mother who stood outside St Peter's Church, Brighton, in 2000 gathering 1,000 names for a petition.

Linda Terry, John's Smith's aunt, also wants to know. She left the NSPCC conference disappointed.

The NSPCC will propose improvements to police/health/social services investigations and prosecutions but they are still struggling with suggested changes in the law.

Mrs Terry said: "I don't think we moved any further forward on the main issue and what I am fighting for was not really discussed."

Mrs Terry, together with judges, professors, social workers, coroners, police officers and barristers, were sickened by the facts presented to them by Malcolm Bacon and police colleague Steve Scott.

Their survey showed almost 500 children had been killed or seriously injured by evil carers nationwide in the three years ending December 2000. All were joint enterprise cases.

A total of 61 per cent never reached court and only 27 per cent of the accused were convicted. That compares to a 90 per cent conviction rate where the offenders are strangers as opposed to parents or carers.

If the statistics are constant, they mean three children are being killed or seriously injured every week and hardly anyone is being brought to book.

The Sussex Police statistics suggest more than 300 children have died or been seriously injured since Mr Turner and others met with Jack Straw.