Hope to Die

All we do know for sure is that Camilla Rowan did none of those things. Instead she carried that first baby to term and, as we’ve heard, gave birth here in early November 1996. But contrary to what she told Dr Morrison, she did not return to Cambridge with her son. She didn’t even live in Cambridge, and there is no such address as 13 Warnock Road in that town. No, what she actually did was go straight to an adoption agency only a few hundred yards from the hospital.

Cut to: reception area, water cooler, sofas, posters of children, etc.

TITLE OVER: Yasmin Njoku,CEO, Central Midlands Adoption and Fostering, 1995-2002

YASMIN NJOKU

It’s fair to say that’s not the usual way we received children.

JOHN’S VOICE (off)

She just turned up with the baby?

YASMIN NJOKU

We had to arrange emergency fostering that day. It was clear she was in no position to look after the child.

JOHN’S VOICE (off)

Do you mean practically, or some other way?

YASMIN NJOKU

Primarily emotionally. When my member of staff tried to say that it would be very difficult to receive the baby there and then she became almost hysterical.

JOHN’S VOICE (off)

So if you hadn’t taken the baby – or if there hadn’t been an agency like you so close to hand – do you think the child might have been at risk of harm?

YASMIN NJOKU

(pause)

Let’s just say it wasn’t a chance we were prepared to take.

VOICEOVER – JOHN PENROSE

Perhaps Camilla herself feared what she might do to the child. Perhaps that’s why she decided that adoption was the only way. Because, whatever her motives, on this occasion Camilla Rowan ‘did the right thing’. Even if the way she went about it was bizarre in the extreme.

MONTAGE: sequence of images of Camilla Rowan’s adoption paperwork; as John mentions specific elements these are underlined on screen and annotated one at a time with ‘False’, ‘Lie’, ‘Does not exist’.

Because as the prosecution case later made abundantly clear, the paperwork Rowan filled out for the adoption agency – both that day and later – was a litany of lies. She gave her real name, but pretty much everything else was a fabrication. She said again that she lived at the Warnock Road address, which we already know was a lie: in fact ‘Warnock’ – as a sharp-eyed police officer later spotted – is just an anagram of ‘C. K. Rowan’. She gave the same GP details she’d given the hospital – another lie. The email address she supplied didn’t exist. There were almost a dozen lies in all. And a mobile number that always went straight to voicemail. Hardly surprising, then, that the adoption service struggled to contact her in the weeks that followed.

Cut to: reception area interior

YASMIN NJOKU

We tried again and again by phone and in writing, but only ever managed to contact her once. That was when the baby was six weeks old and she had to come in to sign the final papers.

JOHN’S VOICE (off)

Did you see her that day?

YASMIN NJOKU

No, I wasn’t in the office, but the colleague who did said she was in and out in five minutes. Apparently she said she ‘just wanted to get it over with’.

JOHN’S VOICE (off)

Did he ask her about the false information she’d given?

YASMIN NJOKU

I think he tried but she kept saying she had somewhere else she needed to be. And it was during lunch-hour and quite busy, and there weren’t many staff available. It’s possible she came in then deliberately – to reduce the likelihood of being asked too many questions.

JOHN’S VOICE (off)

And what happened to the baby?

YASMIN NJOKU

He was successfully placed in a loving family.

JOHN’S VOICE (off)

His identity was protected during the court case, but are you aware whether he knows who his biological mother is?

YASMIN NJOKU

Like all adopted children he would have had the right to see his records when he reached the age of eighteen. I don’t know if he has done so, and I wouldn’t be able to disclose that information even if I did.

Cut to: montage of shots of Camilla – playing hockey, with Leonora and Melissa, at a fireworks party.

VOICEOVER – JOHN PENROSE

When these pictures were taken, Camilla Rowan was pregnant with that baby boy. Four months, seven months, eight and a half months. And yet no one apparently noticed a thing.

TITLE OVER: Leonora Staniforth

LEONORA STANIFORTH

(looking at the pictures)