Another Cleveland Police Scapegoat

Suzanne Holdsworth will be celebrating Christmas with her family this year. For the last three years, this mother of two has been banged up after murdering a two-year old toddler by banging his head against a banister in a fit of rage.

She's free because Cleveland Police failed in its duty of care - not just to poor Kyle Fisher, but to all the people it serves.

In spite of the poor child's obviously abnormal skull, indicative of hydrocephalus, and several other brain abnormalities including a drooping right eye, and a hole the size of coin behind it, Cleveland police brought trumped up charges against the only person to be in the room when he fell terminally ill from a fit.

The babysitter.

No one thought to ask anything of the child's mother, a teenager herself at the time - who it is alleged once locked Kyle in a bedroom so she could have a night out.

It must have been the babysitter.

No one thought to question the several day old bruises.

Those must have been down to the babysitter.

No one checked the banister for blood or DNA where the child's head had, allegedly been battered.

Because police knew the babysitter did it.

No one bothered to check the child's health or his tendency to epilepsy.

That would have meant the babysitter was telling the truth and the police knew better. Even though, as the BBC reports:

"The retrial heard evidence that four nights before he died Ms Fisher left Kyle home alone, locked in a bedroom by tying a belt to a broom handle to block the door. Ms Fisher admitted that she had been a negligent mother. The court heard evidence that Ms Holdsworth was, in contrast, a caring mother to her two daughters, Leslie and Jamie-Leigh, who have never questioned her innocence.

Speaking to the BBC, Professor Renzo Guerrini, a paediatric neurologist at the University of Florence Children's Hospital, said:

"In my opinion there is compelling evidence he had some head injury before this night. This might have been trivial but sufficient enough to produce bleeding on the brain which triggered the epileptic seizure which because of Kyle's brain condition was possibly prolonged."

Leading the investigation into Kyle's death, was Det. Supt. Tony Hutchinson, the supercop who brought serial liars John and Anne Darwin (the "canoeist" and his wife) to justice. Labels like this may have led to the sort of "never wrong" hubris that cost an innocent woman years of her life and her young children, the loss of their mother for that period.

Science teaches us that we should follow the evidence trail and never make assumptions - even about our own cleverness. Lord Kelvin, the man credited with discovering Absolute Zero, was prone to such mistakes. Just eight years before the Wright brothers made a powered flight, he declared that heavier than air flying machines were impossible; and also famously said that radio had no future. (He also believed in God - which speaks volumes to me but perhaps that's just my internal cynic.)

Cleveland police infamously followed the science (as presented to them) during the 1980s child abuse scandal. Sometimes science gets it wrong - but in that case, it wasn't the science that was wrong, but the person presenting it. Dr Marietta Higgs (who is still allowed to practice with children!) had developed and latched on to a dumb-ass theory called the anal-dilation test. Families were devastated and, by the time the truth came out, Cleveland - and its children - could never recover.

This time they chose to ignore the science and, coupled with an apparently lousy defence, there was a terrible miscarriage of justice.

Many of the professionals involved here are to blame. Some of the doctors involved early on were not specialists; the police failed to be thorough in their investigation - I don't want to suggest they ignored the lack of evidence - I don't know.

Worst of all: what of the defence team? Where they asleep?

Didn't anyone think to question even the most basic assertions that this Kyle, a child the jury were told was a happy, normal and healthy toddler was in fact a very poorly infant. A fact that's mind-buggeringly obvious from a simple photograph.

Perhaps everyone now can take time to heal this most egregious of wounds and poor little Kyle can rest in peace.

Assume nothing: question everything.