Comment by YeGoblynQueenne

2 years ago

Hey, can you please post your cambridgeblog.com article on HN?

As you say in your article, there must be hundreds, if not thousands of people in jail for having shaken their babies to death. I can't imagine any harm more horrible that our society can perpetrate than punishing someone for the death of their loved ones when they had nothing to do with it. To think that this is done systematically is inconsolable, insufferable to contemplate.

3 comments

YeGoblynQueenne

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rossant  2 years ago

Sure, done: https://adikia.fr/

  • YeGoblynQueenne  2 years ago

    >> Sure, done: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37650402

    Thanks! Although I just saw it and didn't have the chance to upvote it when it was posted. Let's hope it gets on the second chance queue. It's a good article, well written and level-headed.

    >> This is not just a virtual, academic subject to me.

    I can tell. Thank you for your indefatigable advocacy.

    I read about Shaken Baby Syndrome some time ago and since then I've kept bookmarks of cases I see in the news that seem to be false convictions. I remember one in particular of a British man who was accused of having murdered his baby daughter by shaking. The case has stuck in my mind because the press reported how a Playstation was found on the living room table and the prosecution alleged that the daughter's crying had disturbed the father's playing, and so he had shaken her so he could continue playing. I could not believe that such a far-fetched conjecture, virtually impossible to falsify, would be accepted by judges and juries and thought that for the prosecution to be grasping for straws like that they must really have nothing concrete to go on, but the father was put in jail nonetheless. I don't have my bookmarks at hand now so I can't look up his name.

    I suspect that when legal and medical experts claim that SBS cases don't only take the evidence of the triad into account, that's the kind of "evidence" that they mean they also consider: just-so stories that stop only short of calling the family pet as a witness.

    Edit: I just realised - your association is called "adikia". "Injustice" in my native language, Greek.

  • sacnoradhq  2 years ago

    That sounds like a Kafkaesque, dystopian situation of readily tearing families apart, lack of due process, and guilt until proven innocence.

    I would recommend contacting ProPublica and TheGuardian to raise awareness.

    Edit: My cousin is similar to a nurse at an adolescent lockdown facility in N. Texas for serious mental healthcare and physical safety needs that no parent could reasonably hope to provide. The standard is so high and the beds so few, the kids in the facility are the most desperate cases and pretrial diversions that would otherwise go unaddressed in carceral situations. It takes a special, brave, and trained caregiver to meet the needs that medication, godly patience and tolerance, and love alone cannot provide.