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Baby P And Tracey Connelly’s Day With The Children

by | 15th, May 2010

BABY P’s Mum, Tracy Connelly has spent a day with the kids. The Sun says the “jailed child killer” has been in a “secret reunion” with her surviving children.

Connelly was found guilty of “causing or allowing the death of a child or vulnerable person“. It was not murder. She is in jail indefinitely, and will serve a minimum of five years. And she is briefly with some or all of her four children.

Before sentencing, she wrote to the judge:

“I have lost all I hold dear to me, now every day of my life is full of guilt and trying to come to terms with my failure as a mother. I punish myself on a daily basis and there is not a day that goes by where I don’t cry at some point.”

Judge Stephen Kramer called her  “manipulative and self-centred” and rejected the idea she did not know about her son’s treatment. Says the Sun:

Evil Tracey Connelly, caged last May after the 17-month-old lad died of abuse, was taken to a meeting in London…It is thought to be the first time Connelly, 28, has seen her children since her conviction over the death of Baby P.

So much for the meeting being “secret”, although if there have been others then they were. But what to make of it? The Sun has already decided:

It will shock people who believed she would NEVER be allowed to see them.

The prose then sets the scene:

Cons at Durham’s Low Newton jail were locked in their cells as she swept out of the compound in a prison van to head south.

This is tabloid journalism designed to prick a reaction. It can’t fail to get one. But the story does get to the heart of the thing: what do we do with the one branded evil?

In the Guardian Sandra Laville delivered:

Tracey Connelly: the story of a woman defined by abuse

Baby P’s mother faces years of contempt after making the worst of an abject start in life by allowing her son to die in a home permeated by deception and depravity

Her argument, took in an expert:

Expert sources who have examined Connelly say that she could exhibit love and playfulness towards a child. Anna Motz, a consultant clinical psychologist who has studied women who abuse or collude with a partner’s abuse, said: “In cases like this there is often this early experience of abuse and trauma and neglect in the mother’s background.

“What I see happening is that the mother can develop a narcissistic attitude or way of relating to their child as an extension of themselves and goes on to treat the child with the cruelty, contempt and neglect that they were exposed to themselves. Their norms are different from other people.”

She’s not kidding. But how can it be that a simple story of child abused and dead in the care of his mother and adults can be open to interpretation? Aren’t the facts enough?

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Posted: 15th, May 2010 | In: Reviews Comment | TrackBack | Permalink