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The caller was angry, almost shouting as he accused me and the TODAY programme of undermining the jury system.. "How dare you do this?" he said. "You people at Radio 4, you are so arrogant." He was concerned because we'd just broadcast extracts from letters written by Ian and Angela Gay from prison. The West Midlands couple are appealing against their convictions for the manslaughter of three year old Christian Blewitt, one of three children they'd planned to adopt. A jury had found them guilty in January this year.
Of course many of those found guilty proclaim their innocence, but there are elements of this case which make it particularly troubling. Contrary to the caller's assumptions, we don't broadcast every protestation we receive. The prosecution had claimed that the Gays had force fed Christian Blewitt with salt, and that had caused his death. But anyone who has small children knows that it's extremely hard to make one eat something as revolting as four teaspoons of pure salt... As Dr Peter Acland, a 91热爆 Office pathologist who'd conducted a post mortem on the child put it : "there were no grip marks on the arms, or other signs the child had been held down".
It was Dr Acland's comments which made me - personally -- ask questions about this case. He said that he believed there could have been a miscarriage of justice. That while the medical evidence suggested excessive ingestion of salt could have caused the child's death, nothing said in court convinced him that the child had been forced to eat it by the Gays. There were other ways that Christian could have eaten too much salt -- too many crisps for instance --or he could have had an underlying illness which caused a sodium imbalance. And he said the Gays had been put in the position of having to prove their innocence, rather than the prosecution prove their guilt.
Angela Gay's brother Carl told me that the family had never believed the couple could be found guilty -- and so they hadn't called character witnesses. He said he was horrified to hear his sister and her husband described as a somewhat spoiled couple who were unused to children. He said that he had often left his two younger daughters with his sister, for as long as a week, while he and his wife took their oldest child to Blackpool for her dancing competitions. He said the children loved it so much they didn't want to come home. He brushed aside the suggestion that Christian Blewitt was much harder work than his own daughters. "If they found him difficult ... They could have just given him back!" he said. The three children were only on a trial placement, to see whether the Gays might adopt them.
From prison, both Angela and Ian Gay insisted they loved Christian and his siblings and they would never have done anything to harm him. Ian Gay said that he was only directly accused of force feeding the boy salt when he was in the witness box, and that accusation left him "boiling inside". He said the prosecution case was built on a "character assassination full of lies".
Well they would say that... But then there are Dr Acland's comments, and the fact that the lawyers for Sally Clark and Angela Cannings are now representing the couple. The lawyers believe this case follows a similar pattern: relying on questionable or contradictory medical evidence. Those two women, of course, found guilty of killing their children, had the verdicts quashed. John Batt, who acted for Sally Clark, told me that the fact a jury had found the Gays guilty didn't affect his view. "when a child dies" he said "juries often feel that someone should suffer". He questions whether the case should have been brought at all, given the evidence.
Of course, many people do believe that justice has been done. The original reporting back in January was compelling. The story was of an affluent couple, seeking a certain kind of child to fit into their lives--punishing Christian in a repellent fashion when he didn't behave as they expected. Their own defence was barely reported. Certainly, Christian's natural family believe that the Gays are being rightly punished. Susan Osik, his grandmother, had actually called social services herself when she saw her daughter Tracy was "neglecting" the children as she put it. I asked her whether she regretted her decision-- she said not. But she blamed social services for choosing the Gays as adoptive parents.
No sooner had this piece gone out though, than I was finalising arrangements for another item for the next day. Something completely different -- I can't find an elegant link between salt poisoning and exploding rats.
I was at a new exhibition about the wartime Special Operations Executive, at the National Motor Museum at Beaulieu in the New Forest, a training centre during the war. Though agents remembered learning about surveillance here, the exhibits include miniaturised radios, and sabotage tools, like the famous rats stuffed with explosive. For the occasion, the Museum had flown in the leader of one of the most successful missions, the destruction of the heavy water plant at Telemark in Norway in 1943. Joachim Ronneberg is nearly 86 now, and very fit -- his character was played by Kirk Douglas in the Hollywood version of the event, but he rather resembled Clint Eastwood both in physique and, sadly for me, in his laconic style of conversation.
Sanchia
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