It looks like the Baby Lilly case is rapidly coming to closure. According to the BBC, Rachael Davies has admitted to being the mother and concealing the birth of Baby Lilly:
Baby Lily mother concealed birth
Rachael Davies admitted concealing a birth
A woman has admitted concealing the birth of her stillborn daughter whose body was found by a Warwickshire river.
Rachael Davies, 26, of Wharrage Road, Alcester, was arrested after police used DNA testing to link her to the child, nicknamed Lily by officers.
Stratford-on-Avon magistrates heard Lily was found near the River Alne last May. She had suffered a fractured skull and collarbone.
Davies will be sentenced at Warwick Crown Court at a later date.
The court heard Davies kept the baby’s body in her car overnight before dumping it, sometime between January and May last year.
Apparently the murder investigation was dropped, even though the baby sustained a skull fracture and a broken collarbone. However, I couldn’t find anything that detailed whether these injuries were post-mortem or not. According to David Everett, the prosecutor, “She said it showed no signs of life when it [sic] had been born.” From an earlier article describing Baby Lilly’s injuries (emphasis mine):
Det Ch Insp Adrian Pearson, of Warwickshire Police, said Lilly was found in a Mothercare bag. She was newly born and still had her umbilical cord attached.
Mr Pearson said: “Since the discovery of her body, we’ve been able to establish that she suffered significant and traumatic head injuries after she was born.
“We believe that she died very soon after birth, but that she didn’t sustain those injuries in the course of birth or in the course of pregnancy. They were inflicted on her very soon after she was born.”
OK… while I guess it’s possible that the injuries could have occurred post-mortem (say by banging against rocks and such in a river), I’d like to know the full explanation there. Personally, I don’t get how she can argue that she didn’t know she was pregnant, and then, giving birth to a stillborn baby, decided the best course of action was to dump the body. With her pajamas and an a bag from the place she worked. But apparently, that’s what happened.
As I said before, I don’t know if the justice system will be able to bring justice to this, only closure. For times like this, I can only hope that Ms. Davies actually does feel remorse and guilt for what she’s done, and that guilt in this case will administer its own justice, meted out fairly and appropriately. And I do hope that Baby Lilly was stillborn. It’s just too horrible to think what must have been done to her had she not.
[...] 3/30/07: The woman, Rachael Davies, has pleaded guilty to concealment of a birth, but no murder charges were [...]
While is seems strange, my fiance - an ER room PA - has sees women on a regular basis who are ready to give birth, and don’t know they are pregnant. Often they are rather fluffy. It seems very strange to me, but it does happen on a regular basis.
-Scott
The broken collarbone could be a result of birth injury.
OT: Shoulder dystocia - when the baby’s collarbone hangs up on the mother’s pelvic bone after the head is delivered - can result in a broken collarbone, especially if someone inexperienced or panicked is in attendence. The Gaskin Maneuver, essentially getting the mother on all fours to widen the pelvic space, can resolve shoulder dystocia in almost all cases, but it is not always used, especially in hospital settings where “flat on the back” is the enforced position. /OT
Anyway, it’s a sad case. Since we don’t know what really happened, I have a hard time painting this woman as an evil baby murderer out of hand. There are reasons other than being fat for not knowing one is pregnant - irregular cycles, some other illnesses, a previous diagnosis of infertility - just as there are reasons for concealing pregnancy. Just because they don’t make sense to us, it doesn’t mean they aren’t valid. I don’t know about the help available in Scotland, but it is a fact that there are far too many ways for pregnant women in the U.S. to fall through the cracks and not get the help and support they very much need.
[...] previously discussed the guilty plea and arrest. There are a fair number of comments from people in the area on the arrest post that [...]