Peddling Grief: Baby S Comes After Baby P
THE SUNDAY Mirror delivers Sean, a “NEW BABY P”.
The grief-peddling paper goes on:
Scandal of Baby S: 18-month-old taken off at-risk register and killed by his mother
Baby S? Well, with the Baby P story running out of steam, it’s time for some more baby Porn. Some see. Pull out a hankie.
Tragic toddler Sean Denton – left by Social Services to die at the hands of his drug-abusing mother who had already served a jail sentence for manslaughter.
Terrible stuff. Shocking. But Sean Denton’s life and death is not as brutal a story as that of Baby P’s, whose mother awaits sentencing. But perhaps if the Sunday Mirror can call him Baby S it can look like a progression of the Baby P story?
Amanda Adams smothered her rosy-cheeked son when he was just 18 months old, before hanging herself.
That’s right, Baby S isn’t blonde. So he’s “rosy-cheeked”. And his mum isn’t awaiting trail for his killing because she killed herself. The Mirror puts on it deerstalker and says she “suffered mental health problems”.
Sean’s father Mark Denton was also an alcoholic drug abuser. Amanda, 30, and Mark, 35, together killed a squatter in a violent row in 1999 – and were each sentenced for manslaughter. Amanda was jailed for life, Mark received a lesser sentence – but both released after just five years.
Oh, and “Mark hanged himself last October”. The Mirror does not say if his mind was disturbed.
And now the clincher, and why this is front-page news:
Not surprisingly, Sean was placed on the at-risk register before he was even born. But incredibly he was taken off it at the age of two months because social workers took a “positive” view of his parents.
Yeah, it’s a useless social services story and some of what Janice Turner in The Times calls “pornography of child violence”. The Mirror responds to the popularity of the Sun’s Baby P campaign and sets up one of it own. Can it find another horrific, tawdry death to shine alight on?
The Press corps has no time to read the entire case notes, to work with social services for an extended period to find out how it all works. It wants a neat statistic. It wants a death.
Sean’s desperately short life started in Barnet, North London, on April 10, 2006 – just a month after Baby P was born in the neighbouring London borough of Haringey.
How’s that for a coincidence!
He died on October 26, 2007 – two months after the now-notorious death of Baby P…
What are the odds?
A whistleblower who attended the Serious Case Review was appalled by what he heard. He told the Sunday Mirror: “Sirens should have been ringing as loud and clear over this case as possible…
“Baby S’s death was completely preventable – no ifs or buts.”
The murder of a child was preventable. Get that? Keep that deerstalker on, folks…
The grimness of the story seeks to tap into the reader’s mourning sickness. Objectivity, a mainstay of journalism, is overridden by a lust for titilation and entertainment.
Come see the tragedy. Don’t dare to look away – lest the next victim be you and yours…
Posted: 14th, December 2008 | In: Key Posts, Media Comments (6) | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed: RSS 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink
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December 16th, 2008 at 6:13 pm
‘Damned if they do and damned if they don’t', I think you meant to say, ‘damned if they make efforts to break up families for no valid reason or because they take a personal dislike to the elder family members’ and ‘damned if they don’t consider removing children from the care of a mother who once (along with her then partner) killed a fellow squatter and did 5 years for manslaughter for it’,
At least, that’s what you’d have said if you’d put any thought or did any research on the matter, you confess that you only know some of the details (of what case in particular, might I ask?) and yet you feel qualified to comment that the Mail is being ‘very selective’ about their reporting…
‘Campaigning Mail’ and your issue with that is what exactly? That an ordinary family, facing the possibility of being split apart for no just reason by a branch of the state, SHOULD NOT have anyone like, say, a major newspaper, fighting their corner or helping them stand their ground? I take it that’s what you’d prefer it to be, just little people vs. the State (a very uneven contest)?
December 14th, 2008 at 7:01 pm
and yet the Mail is still campaigning to have three children who were removed with a court order and adopted, returned to their parents. The Mail want the adoptions overturned and the children returned. The couple (with learning disabilities and other issues) have another child who is with them but under supervision and they are expecting another.
‘torn away from loving parents’. Says the campaigning Mail which is very selective in its reporting of the case. I only know some of the details but it seems the Social Workers really are ‘damned if they do and damned if they don’t’.
Imagine if more harm had come to any of those three children? Lose. Lose.
December 14th, 2008 at 3:54 pm
And why the complete news blackout on Babies Q and R?
December 14th, 2008 at 3:40 pm
Blue and yellow for boys and pink and turq for girls?
December 14th, 2008 at 3:07 pm
Soon each paper will have its own figurehead dead child… what colour balloons for this one eh? Blue is already taken…..
December 14th, 2008 at 2:47 pm
Come now, Anorka; if you carry on like this you’ll end up expecting journalists to write fair and honest accounts of the facts….