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Parents cleared of murder as 'shaken baby' trial collapses
9 Dec 2011A mother and father accused of
shaking their four-month-old baby to death walked free from the Old Bailey today when their trial collapsed.
Rohan Wray and Chana Al-Alas spent more than two years suffering the stigma of being accused of killing their own child. Jayden died in July 2009 at Great Ormond Street hospital when his life support machine was turned off.
Wray, 22, and Al-Alas, 19, of Islington, were charged with murder and causing or allowing their son's death. Jurors had been told Jayden had suffered severe head injuries and brain damage. But today they were ordered by the judge to return not-guilty verdicts.
The baby was also suffering rickets, which is often caused by vitamin D deficiency, creating brittle bones. Some experts believed he died from natural causes and nearly 60 called to testify could not agree on what had happened.
Outside court, solicitor Jenny Wiltshire said: "Chana and Rohan can now be allowed to grieve for the tragic loss of their son they loved and cherished. They have been through two-and-a-half years of hell. They were prevented from comforting their dying son or attending his christening. The real criminality is that if money spent on this case had been directed to fulfilling the 1991 directive that breastfeeding mothers be given vitamin D supplements, the death would not have occurred. Rickets, which is now back to epidemic proportions, would have been wiped out."
At the start of the trial prosecutor Sally Howes QC had said: "The injuries suggested to the doctors that Jayden had sustained them as a result of a shaking or a shaking/impact assault."
Al-Alas was 16 and Wray 19 when Jayden was born in March 2009 at University College Hospital. At first he was in good health. But in July his parents took him to the doctor who found him "unwell and puffy around the eyes" with a mild fever. He was referred to UCH and an infection was diagnosed.
Five days later he returned to hospital. His tongue was stuck to his palate, his limbs were twitching and he was gasping. When a doctor questioned the parents, Al-Alas was quiet and Wray did most of the talking, the court heard. They denied any history of injury and ruled out Jayden falling off the bed. When told a scan showed severe brain injury Wray said he was "shocked".
Jayden was moved to Great Ormond Street, but died. A post-mortem found he had "moderately severe rickets". Today Judge Stephen Kramer QC told the jury: "There is insufficient evidence for you to be asked to continue."
Reader views (8)
Without knowing the facts it is hard to make a judgement but Vitamin C deficiency will mimic exactly the signs used to convict SBS cases, rather than that given.
What causes the deficiency? It may well be that injections bring vitamin levels to the level where illness occurs.
Either way the ignorance built up over 40 years by the medical profession is not just disgraceful, but enables Witch Finders to make a handsome living from the bounty and leads to judicial trials directed at the wrong parties.
Death has occurred, somoen is CLEARLY liable in a court of law but we don't put doctors in the dock except when their killings rise towards the thousand.
- John Fryer, Paris, 10/12/2011 16:52
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Is it lack of vitamin D or vitamin C? Or both. Vitamin deficiencies are becoming common and lead to severe illness not well recognised or to be blunt not recognised when there is 50 000 pounds for you if you forget your Hippocratic Oath and all that medicine has learned over the past one hundred years.
The injection of neurotoxic chemicals is now recommended for the expectant mother AGAINST the notice that comes with the vaccines. Off label use but for a neurotoxic unnecessary additive that may be linked to SIDS, autism, epilepsy and SBS is attempted murder by the medical profession.
Are we not trying the wrong parties for this death?
- John Fryer, Paris, 10/12/2011 16:32
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The CPS will proceed with a trial if the odds of a conviction are 50/50. Put another way, they will go to trial based on the flip of a coin. There lies the problem!
- Steve, London UK, 09/12/2011 16:53
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The real tragedy is that there's so little awareness of the need for Vitamin D supplements.
Even light-skinned people are at risk of deficiency in winter, especially if they rarely go outdoors while the sun is shining. (Sun filtered through a window doesn't help). Dark-skinned people are at risk all the time, because the sun here is far weaker than near the equator. Doubly so, if they wear traditional cover-everything clothing. Vitamin D supplements are cheap and will improve your health, even if you are not at the point of developing rickets or brittle bones. Children are even more at risk than their parents.
- Nigel, London, 09/12/2011 16:26
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I hope that some of this common sense in the judiciary begins to make its way into the USA and other countries regarding the mistaken diagnosis of Shaken Baby Syndrome as well as Infantile Rickets.
This case is a classic example of infantile rickets with dark-skinned couple living in a northern climate. In the USA, we're seeing an increasing number of prosecutions of these cases, often with black and/or hispanic parents on trial for 1st degree child abuse. Extra vitamin D is even more necessary for darker complected individuals living in northern climates, as their bodies do not produce as much from direct sunlight (that's why peoples of the north have evolved lighter skin-tones over thousands of years).
Additionally, infants are more likely to suffer coagulation disorders with a vitamin D (and/or K) deficiency, which can lead to uncontrolled bleeding around the brain, as was the case here.
What is truly sad is that this baby's death was actually preventable. At any point, the doctors involved with the mother and baby could have said, "Dark-skinned parents in London need more Vitamin D." Unfortunately, even many doctors are not generally aware of this, which leads to these senseless prosecutions as well, thus adding to the tragedy.
- Jeremy Praay, USA, 09/12/2011 16:06
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Initiating this trial was utterly disgraceful. Heads must roll for this one: CPS heads, police heads and the nodding doctor donkeys that made all this wickedness possible. Head lopping could start with the President of the RCPCH. Why not?
- Dr Mark Struthers, Bedford, 09/12/2011 15:55
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Thank God this case fell apart through lack of medical evidence- to put this couple in the dock at the Old Bailey and charge them with murder without real CPS evidence or proof against them based entirely on the hospitals suspicion A knee jerk reaction from Baby P errors no doubt.
- Mrs Marple, Hillingdon., 09/12/2011 13:05
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Not three years ago the President of the Royal College of Paediatric and Child Health Professor T Stephenson, publicly denied that rickets and Vitamin D were becoming a major problem. If those that are in place to monitor the health of children turn such a convenient blind eye, what hope for 16 year old first time mothers and their unborn children?
Shaken baby syndrome is a myth.
The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie -- deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Belief in myths allows the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought. John F. Kennedy 35th president of US 1961-1963 (1917 - 1963)
- PENNY MELLOR, Stafforshire, 09/12/2011 12:42
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