Mother who left five month old daughter to die in hot car is CLEARED of manslaughter after court was told she suffered from ‘forgotten baby syndrome’
- Jayde Poole, 29, from Bendigo has been cleared of manslaughter
- Her five-month-old Bella was left in a hot car and died from heatstroke
- Evidence during her trial said she suffered from ‘forgotten baby syndrome’
- Other experts have warned against labelling the phenomenon of parents leaving their children in cars a ‘syndrome’
Jayde Poole, pictured outside the Victorian Supreme Court on Thursday, after she was found not guilty of the manslaughter of her five-month-old baby Bella
Ms Poole’s five-month-old daughter Bella Poole died from heatstroke when locked in the car on a 30C day in 2012
A Victorian mother whose baby died after being left in a hot car has been cleared of her manslaughter, after evidence given during her trial said she was suffering from ‘forgotten baby syndrome’.
Five-month-old Bella Poole died from heatstroke when locked in the car on a 30C day after her mother, Jayde Poole, forgot her after a family trip to a Bendigo takeaway shop on December 11, 2012.
Ms Poole put Bella in a baby seat, facing backwards, for the short car ride to Hungry Jacks to pick up a meal for her six-year-old son
Ms Poole forgot Bella was in the car when she locked the door and went inside her house on a 30C day
Ms Poole, 29, was found not guilty in the Victorian Supreme Court on Thursday. During her trial, expert witness Professor David Diamond, a neuroscientist and memory expert from the University of South Florida, claimed she was suffering from forgotten baby syndrome.
Professor David Diamond, a neuroscientist and memory expert from the University of South Florida
But other experts have warned against labelling the phenomenon of parents leaving their children in cars a ‘syndrome’, and say the term could be seized on in order to ‘deflect criminal charges’.
On Thursday it was found Ms Poole’s forgetfulness did not amount to criminal negligence.
Her defence barrister Shane Gardner said she was not a child killer but a well-intentioned mother who had made a mistake.
Defence lawyer Shane Gardner said Ms Poole now wanted to be left to grieve her loss.
‘There are no winners in a case like this,’ he told reporters outside the court in Bendigo.
‘Despite a legal win for Jayde today, the fact is she has to live with these consequences for the rest of her life.’
But what is ‘forgotten baby syndrome’?
Prof Diamond, who gave evidence in Ms Poole’s trial, says it is ‘our attempt to try to understand how it is that normal attentive and loving parents forget that their children are in the car with them.’
‘So they arrive at their destination and they’ve completely lost awareness that their child is in the car so they exit the car leaving the child in it,’ he told The Today Show on Friday.
‘The car heats up and then the child dies of heatstroke.’
Prof Diamond said there had been hundreds of cases of forgotten child syndrome documented worldwide.
‘The constant factor, the common thread to all these forgotten children is that the parent is involved in some sort of habitual drive that typically does not include the child,’ he said.
John Dunn, a memory expert from the University of Adelaide, said that it was ‘not totally beyond the realm of plausibility’ that a parent could forget their child is in a car with them, but he said it was ‘drawing a long bow’ to call it a syndrome.
‘I think there’s a tendency to call everything a syndrome,’ Prof Dunn told Daily Mail Australia.
‘It has that implication that there is some kind of biological defect or cause to it.’
Prof Dunn said memory is fallible.
‘There are lots of factors that will lead people to forget things even the most important things in our lives like children in back seats,’ he said.
But Prof Dunn added that the term ‘forgotten baby syndrome’ makes the incident of a parent forgetting a child in a car sound like it is the result of a mental defect.
‘It’s a typical ploy that everyone will play some sort of a card that they’re suffering from some sort of mental defect.
‘You can always get diverse medical opinion as to what’s going on.’
Prof Dunn said he believed the term ‘forgotten baby syndrome’ would only make sense if it was secondary to another problem, such as depression.
‘In depression one of the things is that memory suffers, you become preoccupied with your own thoughts, which leads to forgetting things.’
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TRAGEDY ON DECEMBER 11, 2012: WHAT HAPPENED TO BABY BELLA
Before Jayde Poole’s manslaughter trial, she made a formal application for charges against her to be dropped.
She tearfully pleaded she had no memory of placing five-month-old Bella in the back seat, and thought originally her daughter had been kidnapped.
Ms Poole, an A-grade netball coach, was a single mother before the December day in 2012 when she strapped her five-month-old Bella into a car seat and forgot her in 30-plus degree temperatures.
The tragedy unfolded on the evening of December 11, 2012 in Bendigo, where the average temperature during the three hours Bella was strapped in the car topped 30 degrees celsius.
Ms Poole had left home in the late afternoon to fetch a Hungry Jacks meal.
Normally, she would have left Bella at home with her mother but Bella was grouchy and so Ms Poole put her in the baby seat, facing backwards, for the short car ride.
They arrived home at 4.45pm. Ms Poole locked the car with the remote control and carried the drinks into the house.
Ms Poole would later say in a police interview she believed she had put Bella down to sleep in a cot.
Ms Poole took a cup of tea outside and lit a cigarette to smoke while she telephoned her friend.
It was after 6.30pm, and still hot.
The two friends chatted about Christmas shopping. The conversation lasted 19 minutes and 44 seconds.
Ms Poole then went to check on Bella in her cot in a front room of the house.
Neither Bella nor her bottle was in the cot.
Ms Poole rang her sister in a panic and told her: ‘I put her down for a sleep and she’s not there. Someone’s taken her.’
Ms Poole hung up and rang the Bendigo police to report a child abduction.
The police arrived within ten minutes and started searching the house.
Ms Poole’s brother was the first of several family members to turn up amid flashing blue lights, sirens and confusion among the neighbours who gathered outside the crime scene tape on the street.
An officer asked Ms Poole to open her car which was parked not 200 metres from the house.
They made the terrible discovery – Bella in her car seat, not moving. Ms Poole broke down, crying and screaming.
The baby was taken to hospital where medical staff tried to revive her. It was too late. They declared Bella dead.
Dr Mark Putland later told police he believed the child had been dead for some time before reaching hospital.
He observed ‘bluish purple discolouration’ on Bella’s back and buttocks, which indicated the child was ‘really dead’.
A post mortem on Bella discovered traces of morphine. Forensic examiners questioned whether paramedics administered the drug instead of adrenaline.
Ms Poole’s relatives told police she was a ‘loving mum’ and her children were ‘always dressed well and clean and happy’.
Her mother denied she was forgetful, saying she was ‘really switched on’ and would ‘never do anything to hurt her kids’.
Over the ensuing year, as the Poole family tried to come to terms with the little girl’s death, the Victorian Office of Public Prosecutions mounted a case against Jayde Poole.
She was found not guilty of manslaughter in the Victorian Supreme Court on Thursday July 24.