Hope to Die

The subject is a 22-year-old woman who has been charged with the murder of her newborn child in 1997. She has no previous criminal convictions. This report has been prepared as part of the pre-trial assessment process. I conducted three interviews, two at my office, and one at her parents’ address, where I was able to observe the home environment and family dynamic. I also administered an MMPI-2 test (Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory 2), the full results of which are given in the annexe. This is a standard psychological diagnostic test.

Executive summary

The subject comes from a stable and socially advantaged background, and has had a private education. She is an only child, with attentive and supportive parents. She has no history of mental illness, nor any other significant health issues beyond minor childhood ailments, nor is there any family history of psychiatric issues. She was well presented at interview, well groomed and neatly dressed in slightly formal clothes. When questioned about this, she said her mother had chosen them. She was polite and co-operative, exhibiting neither aggression nor impatience with the process. Throughout the interview she was calm and self-possessed, apart from on certain specific occasions as detailed below. Her affect was normal and congruent.

MMPI-2

This test assesses a subject’s mental health on ten scales, including depression, paranoia, and schizophrenia. In this case the data gave no indication of any of the above, and found no evidence that the subject is experiencing psychopathology. However, it is important to note that the subject scored extremely highly on both the ‘L’ and ‘K’ scales. In twenty-two years of practice, I have rarely seen scores of this magnitude. High answers on the L scale (commonly referred to as the ‘Lie’ scale) indicate that the subject is hyper-sensitive to their public image, to the extent of refusing to acknowledge traits or responses that might paint them in a poor light. In respect to the subject, these scores were amply borne out by the observations made in interview. The K scale questions are designed to measure defensiveness, and again, in this case, indicate the subject has an abnormally strong need to be seen positively.

Interview

Based on my observations at the parental home, the subject’s family milieu has clearly been problematic: the mother masks profound social insecurities under an assertive, almost brusque outward demeanour, and has clearly fetishised social standing almost to the point of mania (a trivial but telling example: on my arrival at the house she made a rather lame joke about being relieved I wasn’t wearing a white coat ‘so the nosey parkers won’t find out’). Numerous items in the house attested to the value attached to the family’s position in the local community: photographs of the subject’s father with dignitaries such as the Mayor and MP, a cabinet of the subject’s sporting medals and trophies, framed cuttings from the local press featuring the family business and charitable events organised by the subject’s mother. The immediate community context also served to inculcate a habit of secrecy: the subject described her small rural town as ‘the sort of place where everyone wants to poke their noses in – you learn pretty quick how to mind your own business’. The fact that she used this particular phrase was instructive: I note from police transcripts that when the subject’s mother was asked by a teacher from another school whether her daughter might be pregnant she replied ‘it’s none of your business’ (I note also that the mother denies this incident ever occurred).

The subject would thus have grown up in an environment in which it would be not only unacceptable but unthinkable to bring shame or embarrassment on the family. This was clearly a major factor in the subject’s decision to hide the pregnancies, not just from her parents but from the world in general. However, I believe the issue is more complex than that; I believe there was, in fact, no real ‘decision’ or thought process at all. Becoming pregnant out of wedlock (and especially, in the case of the first pregnancy, with a mixed-race child) was literally ‘unthinkable’: she was unable to think about it, or, therefore, do anything about it. The subject herself described the pregnancies as feeling ‘unreal’ and ‘like it was happening to someone else’. Likewise, when asked why she did not arrange to have terminations, especially after the first live birth, she could not give a coherent answer.