Loving note that proved baby Effie’s mum and dad WEREN’T monsters
Tucked into a photo album, a judge found it by accident. It helped stop them losing their child for ever – and their victory could save others wrongly accused of causing Shaken Baby Syndrome
A-POIGNANT note from heartbroken young mother Carla Andrews was tucked into the family’s photo album as she faced last Christmas Day without her seven-month-old daughter Effie.
It said simply: ‘It’s December 24, 10.15pm. I’m ready for bed, but as I write this I am dreading Christmas tomorrow because our baby girl won’t be here. I am missing you Effie... we all are. Me and Daddy promise to have you home soon. We love you, always have, always will. XXXXX’
This message, discovered by a judge by chance when the album was handed in as evidence during an historic family court case, helped stopped Effie being taken away and adopted. For the judge said it provided proof of the devotion of Carla and her partner Craig to Effie even though the pair were facing accusations of violently shaking their daughter and nearly killing her.
The reprieve was not only a huge relief for Effie’s parents, but the judge’s view that they were innocent is expected to influence many cases that involve parents who are wrongly blamed for causing their babies’ injuries. As a result of research by the couple’s lawyers and by Carla herself, it was discovered that Effie has a complex, inherited medical ailment that mimics the symptoms of what is called Shaken Baby Syndrome (SBS).
Now, at last, the couple have been cleared and are free to bring Effie back home to live with them again. Craig, a landscape gardener, and Carla, a slip of a woman who is a photo model, long for the moment when the family can resume normal life. There is a brand new cot waiting in the baby’s bedroom at their house near a park in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, and a visit to a children’s pet centre is planned as Effie’s first birthday treat in a few days’ time.
The ordeal began for the couple — who are both 23 — last August when their three-month-old girl suffered a sudden collapse in the middle of the night. Her parents rang the ambulance service, which took her to hospital, where doctors found that she had a bleed on the brain.
Within hours, Craig was arrested and accused of shaking her while social services told Carla that their child was to be put into foster care.
Shaken Baby Syndrome (SBS) first hit the headlines in 1997 when British au pair Louise Woodward, working in Boston, America, was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter for deliberately shaking a boy in her care who subsequently died.
The syndrome was said to indicate that brain bleeds, bruising and fractures of children’s bones were signs of deliberate physical abuse of babies by parents or carers.
In the years since, hundreds of sick babies have been removed from their families on the grounds they have been shaken.
However, the theory is controversial. Research has found that other factors — such as Vitamin D deficiency (which causes weakened bones) and many hereditary diseases — can mimic the physical signs of SBS. One such disorder passed between generations is Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (EDS), which is linked to an array of symptoms.
They include fragile bones, gastric problems, weak blood vessels, bleeding on the brain or behind the eyes, a thinness of the skin and easy bruising. Some sufferers of what is called vascular or type 4 EDS also have distinctively large eyes, small ears, and are prone to being double-jointed.
Indeed, it was proved as a result of a test during the legal battle over Effie that she has this type of EDS, which was almost certainly inherited from Carla, who recently had the same syndrome diagnosed.
However, neither Carla nor Craig had any inkling of this when Effie fell ill last August.
Frail and underweight, she was gasping for breath and had suddenly gone floppy and pale. Her parents called an ambulance. When paramedics arrived six minutes later, they thought, according to court papers, that Effie was dead.
Craig remembers cradling his daughter in his arms: ‘I felt her go completely stiff. There was a fixed gaze on her face and she became as white as a ghost. I was scared we were losing her.’
As Effie clung to life in the hospital intensive care ward, doctors summoned social workers and the police because they believed one of her parents had shaken her just prior to her admission, causing a bleed on her brain.
Although Effie had no external injuries, 24 hours later doctors said they had found redness on her lip and two small bruises on her body. They blamed Craig and Carla, although now it is thought the lip mark was caused by an oxygen mask and her body may have been bruised during scans or other medical examinations in hospital. Surprisingly, no immediate genetic tests were made to find out if there was another reason for her illness, despite the little girl having a poor health history and her parents’ desperate denials that they had harmed her.
Carla remembers: ‘I had suspicions that something was wrong with Effie from soon after she was born.
‘Her eyes were very big, and she would often vomit and couldn’t keep her milk down.
‘We told doctors we were worried. They just keep saying she was fine. Once, I was ridiculously told I was over-feeding her and that made her sick. Even so, she was a joy to us, but we always treated her like glass.’
Such was the couple’s concern that they had taken Effie to GPs, to the local casualty department and to out-of-hours clinics more than 17 times because of weight loss and sickness between her birth in May and her collapse in August.
But none of this seemed to convince the doctors when she was rushed into hospital.
They only seemed to point the finger of blame at her parents.
Craig remembers the nightmare vividly. ‘They didn’t appear to listen to what we told them about Effie’s medical history,’ he says.
‘We realised the medics thought we were guilty when plainclothes police turned up 12 hours after she was admitted and said we had to answer some questions.
‘We thought they were social workers until they announced they were Thames Valley detectives. They said doctors had told them our daughter had a non-accidental injury.
‘The nurses had, obviously, heard the same story because they looked terrified of us even if we just tried to gently kiss Effie on the head.’ Worse was to follow. Craig got into an argument with the police when they stopped him entering the intensive care department to see his daughter. They bruised his arm with a truncheon,
‘I felt her go stiff. I thought we were losing her’
‘If we tried to kiss Effie the nurses looked terrified’
then took him to a police station, placed him in a cell for nine hours and told him he was under suspicion for harming his baby.
The investigation against him was only dropped last week.
He explains his understandably protective reaction, saying: ‘If you try to take a cub from a lion, what it is going to do?’
Next, he says police secretly took the couple’s keys from their bag in the hospital and searched all their house — even a garden shed — for signs of Effie’s blood.
Craig says: ‘They thought I was a child-killer.’
Three days later, with Effie still in hospital, the couple were taken to a family court, and an emergency protection order for their daughter was issued. It meant she could not return home to her parents. Instead, she was sent into foster care when she left hospital early last October.
Desperate to prove the couple’s innocence, Carla’s lawyers investigated the possibility that the injury was the result of a medical condition.
They asked Carla if she had ever heard of Ehlers-Danos Syndrome. She hadn’t but began searching the internet about symptoms.
The more she read, the more she thought this might be the cause of Effie’s problem.
She says: ‘I was always small for my age and very wary of school games because I bruised so easily. My eyes are big, my ears small, and the veins show through my skin.’ Believing these could have been signs of the syndrome, she underwent medical tests and was found to have the disorder.
As a result of this, it was arranged by their lawyers for Effie to be tested, too.
This was done by an eminent geneticist in London in December. The results — released three months ago — proved that Effie had inherited EDS.
‘We cried because we realised she has a life-long problem, but they were happy tears because the test results cleared our name,’ said Carla yesterday. But their ordeal was not over. When the couple told social workers of the test findings, they said Effie was still being considered for adoption and must remain in foster care.
Until last week’s court ruling, her parents were only allowed to see the little girl three times a week — for 90 minutes at a social services contact centre. Their visits were heart-breaking.
‘When we left the contact centre, Effie would follow us with her eyes. It was always better if she had fallen asleep before we went. We were always upset to leave her,’ says Carla.
Finally, earlier this month, in a lengthy court hearing in front of Her Honour Judge Venables in Milton Keynes, EDS was accepted as the reason for Effie’s turn for the worse. The medical evidence meant that Buckinghamshire social services withdrew their application to have the girl kept in care or adopted.
The couple shook the judge’s hand after she said: ‘It is clear . . . she is a precious baby adored by both parents. I consider that Effie’s collapse was most likely the consequence of a naturally evolving disease.’
The judge said she had made her court ruling open to allow Effie’s parents to ‘engage in the debate’ about type 4 EDS and its impact on children.
It was a historic move in England’s notoriously secretive family courts — a system which has seen parents imprisoned for talking about the outcomes of hearings.
Vitally, the judge’s decision could help shed light on how other innocent parents are being unfairly accused of baby-shaking. Rioch Edwards-Brown, a campaigner for accused families, fears that many have been wrongly convicted on the opinion of doctors and social workers rather than on fact.
Meanwhile, William Bache, the solicitor for Effie’s father and a senior consultant at law firm GT Stewart, says: ‘Effie’s case highlights a problem I’ve seen far too many times. Parents seek help at a hospital for their ill baby.
‘If symptoms are found which some say indicate Shaken Baby Syndrome, there is an unthinking reaction leading to the conclusion of abuse.
‘There is then no further medical inquiry into any other possible reason for the illness. It is a tunnel vision which might leave a child untreated or even dead.’
Significantly, the Court of Appeal has ruled that due to the continuing confusion surrounding Shaken Baby Syndrome, a criminal conviction should never be made where there is conflicting medical opinion. There must be incontrovertible evidence of an assault.
However, in the secretive world of family courts, where decisions are made on ‘balance of probabilities’, hundreds of parents every year are still having children removed into care or adopted, despite proclaiming their innocence.
Although totally vindicated, Craig and Carla say that shockingly they have not received any apology from the police, the hospital doctors or social workers.
Yesterday, Craig said: ‘We missed our child’s first babbling words, our first Christmas together. We will never get those precious times back.
‘But because the judge has allowed us to speak out about our case, we hope it will help other parents wrongly accused of shaking their child.’
‘We missed her first words, our first Christmas’