Mercy and Justice

Alison Pearson has written quite the best comment I've read about the events which led to Tania Clarence killing her three profoundly disabled children.

I suspect there is much more to come out about the behaviour of the 'professionals' who threatened to the three Clarence children into care because their parents were resisting the advice of doctors and others, as to what was in the children's best interests. 

Gary Clarence is involved in an independent review into the behaviour of medical and social work staff  and I only hope that if the 'professionals' are found to have acted in an overbearing and threatening way, that they are held properly to account.


Allison Pearson: The unimaginable sorrow of Tania and Gary Clarence

In the saddest story the judge has ever heard, we can be grateful that society showed Tania Clarence compassion

Tania Clarence (centre) at the Old bailey where she was detained under a hopsital order, for the murder of her three children. Shown right is her solicitor Richard Egan, who sat in the dock with her. Photo: Julia Quenzler



By Allison Pearson - The Telegraph

In his sentencing remarks at the Old Bailey, Mr Justice Sweeney addressed the defendant thus: “Tania Clarence, you are now aged 43, and are of previous good character.”

That plain, factual statement had a depth charge of unimaginable sorrow because this was no ordinary criminal. For life had dealt Tania Clarence a series of terrible blows. After her daughter, Taya, was born in 2006, Tania suffered several miscarriages before giving birth to Olivia in June 2009. The happiness of Tania and her husband Gary seemed complete when, soon after, she fell pregnant with twin boys. Max and Ben were born prematurely at 26 weeks while the family was on holiday in Portugal in July 2010. The babies remained in intensive care for four months until they were finally allowed to return to the Clarences’ Wandsworth home in November

That’s a hell of a strain for any parent to cope with. As if things weren’t difficult enough, in August 2010, while the twins were still in hospital, it was discovered that Olivia Clarence suffered from Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA) Type 2, or “floppy baby” syndrome – a genetic disorder that leads to muscle-wasting and considerably reduced life expectancy. Most children with SMA die by their early teens.

Three months later, the shellshocked Clarences were told that Max and Ben also had SMA. To cope with one profoundly disabled infant is a challenge. Tania Clarence, a woman who had suffered depressive episodes throughout her life and had a family history of suicide, now had to deal with four children under the age of four, three of whom had a life-limiting condition that meant they would never feed themselves or control their movements.

All the evidence suggests that Gary and Tania carried their beloved burden with indefatigable courage. They moved to Surrey and borrowed heavily to equip their new house with everything necessary to make the children’s lives as easy as possible. The Clarences preferred to put quality of life for their babies before operations and countless painful medical interventions, which they deemed unnecessary, given the circumstances. The professionals disagreed. There were distressing clashes with doctors and social services. In one crisis, the Clarences were accused unfairly of tampering with Olivia’s medical equipment. Then, Tania’s rock, social worker Suzie Holley, was taken off the case and replaced with a novice because Kingston Social Services, in their infinite wisdom, decided that Miss Holley had got “too close” to Mrs Clarence.

Just imagine what a hammer blow that was to a woman struggling to cope day-to-day while her brain was still clanging with the death sentence her three babies were living under. Soon after, on Easter Tuesday, while Gary was away with their eldest child, Tania took a nappy and smothered Ben and Max and then Olivia, before attempting suicide. In a note for their nanny, she explained that she had to kill the children as well as herself because Gary would never be able to cope with them on his own.

It’s the kind of warped maternal logic – love gone mad – which makes perfect sense to someone who is mentally ill. In a heartbreaking note to her husband, Tania said that the only thing that was giving her the strength to kill “Liv” was the thought that Max and Ben were already playing in Heaven as they had never been able to play before.

It is, as the judge remarked, the saddest story he had ever come across. And yet, even amid the horror, there are small things to be grateful for. There was no witchhunt of Tania Clarence. A public, which is far better educated about depression than it was even a few years ago, grasped from the start that a doting mother who had done that to her darling children was to be pitied, not reviled. Similarly, the prosecution at Tania’s trial accepted her plea of guilty to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility, due to being mentally ill. Lord Justice Sweeney, who could have awarded Mrs Clarence a prison sentence, elected instead for the humane option of a hospital order, and to have Tania confined for her own safety under the Mental Health Act.

Questions were also raised about the culpability of the authorities that were supposed to be supporting the family, not adding to their woes. The judge noted that Tania Clarence had barely slept in the months before she killed her children because of the “increasing distress” of watching Ben, Max and Olivia’s treatment by doctors.

Altogether, the quality of mercy was palpable throughout the case. As the judge told the sobbing woman in the dock: “The prosecution accepts that you loved all four of your children – indeed, there is a substantial body of evidence that they were happy and well looked after – and that you were grief-stricken that Olivia, Max and Ben were destined to die early and before you.”

Compare and contrast with the horrendous treatment that befell Sally Clark, another woman of previously good character, who in 1999 was hounded and wrongfully jailed for the “murder” of her two cot-death babies. Sally’s depression was mistaken for heartlessness, her inability to feel anything for cold indifference. We knew no better back then.

Gary Clarence has said he will stand by his wife on “the long road ahead”. Good man. He must have gone through such a maelstrom of feelings when he learned what she had done to the children, yet he is clear that his wife loved them but was “overwhelmed by depression because of the constant pressures of caring for them”.

Gary says lessons need to be learned from his wife’s story of “dedication and love which turned to despair and utter hopelessness”. They certainly do. One lesson is for the official experts in disabled children who think they know better than the parents who care for those children 24/7. The other lesson is that mental illness is every bit as serious as the physical kind and our society is more civilised for understanding that.

The traditional business of the law is justice balanced with mercy. In the case of Tania Clarence, however, there was no need for balance. Mercy was the justest thing of all.