GUILTY UK - Jordan Burling, 18, Died Weighing Less Than 6 Stone, Body Of Baby Also Found, Leeds, June 2016

[Legally Bland]

13:20
She gave the baby mouth to mouth
Mr Lumley said she was pregnant for a full term - 40 weeks - and asked whether she felt the baby move or kick during that time.

She said ‘No’.

He asked her why he didn’t phone an ambulance immediately when she started bleeding heavily and going into labour.

She said she ‘started to panic’ and was focused on what was happening, while everyone else was downstairs.

She also said there would have been no point calling for help as ‘nobody hears anything’when they are downstairs and the TV is on.

Mr Lumley asked if she tried to call for help at all.

‘No,’ she said.

The barrister then said ‘it sounds like you didn’t want anyone to know you were having this baby.’

She said she didn’t call out because the baby ‘wasn’t breathing’.

She said she checked to see if the baby was breathing several times by checking it’s pulse, feeling for a heartbeat and holding its face near her ear to listen for the sound of breathing.

She also claims she gave the baby mouth to mouth.

Live: Family on trial after dead teen and baby found in Leeds house

 

[Legally Bland]

13:23
"I love children"
Mr Lumley asked her I she would have kept the child if it was alive.

“I would have done yes, I love children”

He then asked her ‘did you want it in your life?’

“Had that baby been alive, definitely.

“It weren’t alive, I did everything with its chest and that, but there were no noises and nobody else new”

Surely you must have screamed for help?’ Asked Mr Lumley.

She said that she didn’t because it ‘didn’t hurt as much’ as her previous labours.

Mr Lumley then said that it was surely ‘a matter of life or death’ at that point.

Dawn replied:

“There was obviously no life”

Live: Family on trial after dead teen and baby found in Leeds house

 

[Legally Bland]

13:23
"I think it was a boy"
Dawn was asked if she remembered the sex of the baby?

“I think it was a boy”

Mr Lumley says she recently told a psychologist, who is sat in court, that she couldn’t remember the sex of the baby.

“I might have done on that occasion, but sometimes I forget stuff”

Live: Family on trial after dead teen and baby found in Leeds house

 

[Legally Bland]

13:56
Do you kill your child?
Mr Lumley asked Dawn if she killed the child shortly after giving birth.

“No, definitely not”

She then explained how she put the baby, the chord and the placenta into some plastics bags, then stuffed them into a rucksack. She claims that she put the rucksack into the wardrobe and checked on it around 30 minutes later, but never looked at it again after that.

Mr Lumley asked her if she then went downstairs after giving birth.

“I can’t remember. I might have gone downstairs but I can’t remember.”

She was asked whether she told her mother about the birth and she said no.

“If it had been breathing it would have been different, but it wasn’t”

She was asked why she didn’t tell any of her relatives.

“I didn’t want to worry my parents, they were going through a lot themselves.”

Live: Family on trial after dead teen and baby found in Leeds house

 

[Legally Bland]

14:00
‘Was that little boy alive when you put him in that plastic bag?'
Dawn Cranston told the court that she slept in the same room as the dead baby and so did Jordan and Abigail.
Mr Lumley asked if she ever told her family to stay away from the wardrobe and she said that she didn’t but no one ever went in there.

“Was that little boy alive when you put him in that plastic bag?” asked Mr Lumley.

“No definitely not”

The barrister then asked why she didn’t want anyone else to know about the stillbirth.
Again she said that she ‘shut down’ at that stage.
Mr Lumley also asked her why she ‘didn’t bother to move that bag that contained his (Jordan’s) brother’ from his room?
She explained that she thought about taking the baby out of the wardrobe and burying him at a nearby park but said it ‘might look suspicious ‘ and there was ‘always someone in the house’.

Live: Family on trial after dead teen and baby found in Leeds house

 

[Aescwynn]

These women "shut down" an awful lot when they need to take responsibility for something.

The following is my opinion about Dawn and the baby and it is potentially upsetting. Just a little heads up.

Just MOO, and this is a pretty damning judgment, but this is what I believe from Dawn's testimony. I believe her that she didn't realize she was pregnant. This does happen. The baby could have kicked and there could have been other signs, and she decided she was going to ignore it, to deny the fact she was pregnant. Finally, she went into labor. I do not believe her that the child was stillborn. I think she stuffed him into the bag because she didn't want him to exist. Maybe she strangled him first so there would be no crying. But I absolutely do not believe that child was stillborn.

 

[Legally Bland]

14:15
Was Jordan an independent adult?
Mr Lumley moved on to question Dawn about Jordan.

He established that Jordan never had a job, was not at college and was financially dependent on his mother.

He then asked Dawn whether she thought of Jordan as a man.

“Yeah because he were 18 and the way he talked to everybody.

“He thought he was the man of the house.”

The barrister asked whether he helped her around the house and did chores, such as ‘the guttering’.

“He would do various things like he would help with shopping.”

He then asked her whether she honestly thought he could have lived as ‘an independent man’.

“He could have done but he couldn’t decide what he wanted to do.”

Mr Lumley asked her to ‘be sensible’, before repeating the question.

“Not financially, because I financially supported him because he didn’t have anything coming in at that point.”

Dawn then told the court, several times, that Jordan had not got a job or enrolled at a college because he ‘couldn’t decided what he wanted to do’.

Live: Family on trial after dead teen and baby found in Leeds house

 

[Legally Bland]

These women "shut down" an awful lot when they need to take responsibility for something.

The following is my opinion about Dawn and the baby and it is potentially upsetting. Just a little heads up.

Just MOO, and this is a pretty damning judgment, but this is what I believe from Dawn's testimony. I believe her that she didn't realize she was pregnant. This does happen. The baby could have kicked and there could have been other signs, and she decided she was going to ignore it, to deny the fact she was pregnant. Finally, she went into labor. I do not believe her that the child was stillborn. I think she stuffed him into the bag because she didn't want him to exist. Maybe she strangled him first so there would be no crying. But I absolutely do not believe that child was stillborn.

I was with you about the baby until I read Tortoise's links last night and I started giving Dawn the benefit of the doubt.

But yeah, there's a lot of "shutting down", forgetfulness and story-changing.

The prosecutor seems to be getting a bit more confrontational now in his cross-ex.

 

[Legally Bland]

14:19
Could Jordan have moved out?
Mr Lumley asked Dawn whether her son ‘was equipped’ to get a job or move out.

“He could have done if he wanted to.”

Live: Family on trial after dead teen and baby found in Leeds house

 

[Sooty]

I honestly wouldn't know how anyone would be able to prove the baby was alive at birth, died shortly after through lack of assistance, but natural causes, or died due to neglect or worse. I think that when she had Jordan she gave birth after not realising she was pregnant, and I know that that happens as a fairly common occurrence. How on earth do you keep that sort of thing a secret though?

 

[Sooty]

The baby's birth and death, I mean.

 

[Legally Bland]

14:31
Trial adjourned until Monday
The trial has been adjourned until Monday.

We’ll be back with live coverage when the trial resumes.

Live: Family on trial after dead teen and baby found in Leeds house

 

[Aescwynn]

I was with you about the baby until I read Tortoise's links last night and I started giving Dawn the benefit of the doubt.

But yeah, there's a lot of "shutting down", forgetfulness and story-changing.

I did read the links, but I'll go back over them.
I'm being hard on her in the case of the baby because while I understand that she has some type of mental disability, I really draw the line at child abuse. And her testimony just does not ring true to me.

 

[Sooty]

Does anyone know what the charge is in relation to the baby boy? I am probably being blind/ stupid but I cannot see it. I can see that she has pleaded guilty to concealment of the birth.

 

[Tortoise]

Does anyone know what the charge is in relation to the baby boy? I am probably being blind/ stupid but I cannot see it. I can see that she has pleaded guilty to concealment of the birth.

That was the charge. Concealment of the birth.

 

[Sooty]

So they are not trying her for anything else in respect of the baby? Just establishing the facts of what happened and whether it has any bearing on Jordan's case.

 

[Tortoise]

So they are not trying her for anything else in respect of the baby? Just establishing the facts of what happened and whether it has any bearing on Jordan's case.

Yes that's the way I understand it. Whether it was a repeat of her abandoning care of her children I suppose. Personally I don't see the two as comparable if the baby was stillborn. They can't prove he wasn't but it seems that they are still testing that.

 

[Tortoise]

It's quite strange how she split up with the father of her two children just because she moved back home with her parents. There seems to be so much detachment, through the generations too.

 

[Tortoise]

Referring to the discovery of the baby's body, prosecutor Nicholas Lumley, QC, asked Cranston during cross-examination: "I don't suppose you killed him did you?"

Cranston replied: "No, definitely not."

Mr Lumley then asked: "Perhaps smothered him?"

She replied: "No, definitely not."

Leeds mum denies smothering baby before she hid body in wardrobe for 14 years

 

[Tortoise]

Looking back over today's cross-examination it seems as if her mother Denise's barrister is doing more to defend her than her own barrister. Getting her to talk about her domineering father and how they were scared to go against Jordan's wishes. This case is unusual in that none of them are blaming each other, it's a twist on the standard defence advocacy of casting blame that I haven't seen before. Is he allowed to do it because her answers assist her mother's case I wonder.