Sally Clark RIP

I wanted to write about Sally Clark’s untimely demise when I saw the news yesterday. Despite writers at the Devil’s Kitchen getting in before me, I still wanted to consolidate my thoughts and to extend my sorrow at the final chapter in this Shakespearian tragedy.

I recall at the time of her trial and conviction a sense of outrage; of injustice being done. Everything hinged on “expert” testimony. At the time, though, I did not realise just how inexpert that testimony was; involving the manufacture of artificial syndromes and plucking “statistics” from the ether. That a jury failed to see through this is deeply disturbing. Clark’s subsequent successful appeal and release from gaol was, I thought, entirely predictable as were the subsequent quashed convictions of the other victims of Roy Meadow’s pomposity. The final tipping point being the failure of the Trupti Patel prosecution.

As DK points out in his piece:

As a doctor, Meadow should at least have considered a cot death gene; he certainly should have considered environmental factors. But he stubbornly stuck to his flawed figure and ruined the lives of at least three families before he was rumbled.

And what happened to him? After the ruining a good number of lives with his ignorance, stupidity and intransigence he was accused of misconduct and struck off. This decision was overturned on Appeal to the High Court. So, after destroying three families, Roy Meadow has lost precisely nothing (other than any future expert witness fees, obviously).

Quite. If I had my way, Meadow would have been sent down year for year (consecutively) for every year spent inside by the victims of his quack medicine and crackpot theories. The man walked free yet ruined these lives; lives already damaged by the demise of their children. Is it any wonder that Sally Clark had been “unwell” since her release and was unable to adjust to normality? What is normality to someone who suffered at the hands of a state sponsored persecution such as she did? Indeed, it didn’t stop with the quashing of her conviction and release, these charlatans came back for another go; Professor Southall went on to blame Mr Clark for the deaths and was found guilty of professional misconduct as a consequence. Frankly, he got off lightly.

Sally Clark’s life was ruined by the medical profession and the legal system in this country. Her suffering and premature demise have highlighted in the public consciousness the iniquity inherent in “expert” testimony and a system the presumes guilt just because a jury was bamboozled with quack science. It is a shame, therefore, that others still consider that what she suffered was in some way down to her own actions:

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.

There is nothing eminent about Roy Meadow; the man is a charlatan who used manufactured “statistics” as evidence in a murder trial. There is nothing eminent about such behaviour. There are words to describe it, but “eminent” is not one of them. As DK says so well:

As for bringing down “two eminent professors of paediatrics”? Don’t make me fucking laugh! Roy Meadow, a man so stupid and convinced of his rectitude that he refused to consider any genetic component to cot death? A man who proposed a theory (Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy) and then apparently destroyed the research?

What a very strange definition of “eminent” we have these days. If Sally Clark could be proud of anything now, the fact that she destroyed the credibility (and, hopefully, career) of this desperate charlatan should be one of her crowning glories.

Indeed. Sally Clark, may you rest in peace and may your suffering not have been in vain.