Australia Australia - Tegan Lane, 2 days old, Sydney, 14 Sept 1996 *K. Lane guilty*

I have a background as a social worker and as DOCS worker, now retired. Just taking away for a moment the issues of Tegan etc. we are left with an intelligent woman who has had 5 pregnancies. So she knew how it happened and the results of what happened. She has 2 terminations early in her career. She knew what to do. Then she indulges in high risk behaviour by carrying to full term, which no-one apparently notices. (ahem)
Why did she not opt for contraception or termination as a sensible person with career aspirations might do?
I can't get my head around why she chose to risk exposure and her career ending over other more protective means. 5 pregnancies astounds me, it's not like contraception was unavailable. I heard her say she compartmentalizes incidents in her life, I imagine that is common among elite athletes, helping them to focus fully on what they are doing. That's where baby Tegan is. She shows an amazing
proclivity for denial which clearly runs in the family. She actually believes what she says is true. She isn't lying in a pathological way she has just put it in the compartment and left it there. It seems that is the way she coped, it's like a kind of disassociation she may or may not have a memory of.
The denial helps her to disassociate.
I have a feeling she does not know what she did with Tegan, it's locked away with other stuff. But she does believe her own lies because they are protection for her psychological frailty. I would have been just as concerned as the other SW, especially as she went on to have more child/ren. I don't judge her to be risky towards her other child/ren because it's overt and everyone knows about it. The timing was right.
The other children were not in the right place at the right time, so they were shrouded in a secrecy aided and abetted by insane levels of denial. Her first thought during her exposure was how her parents would react, not for the babies and not for Tegan. I don't know what is wrong with her other than these observations. Sorry it's so long.
Long but great! I think you come very close to what had happened.

I guess social workers like you, with experience with people "on the ground", actually have a better understanding of Keli, than those experts who study and analyse... For some reason they tend to be taken by her charm/charisma, not really seeing through that imo.
 
Can ask ExposedABC. Except that they always close commenting whenever I am around!
I have often wondered how the capsule was made available. Did Keli take the capsule with her before being induced? Was Tegan in clothes that Keli took to the hospital?
Exposed gave the impression that Andrew was at the bed and carried the capsule down the corridore to the lift (replay) but I am not sure that is how Keli said things occurred.
 
If she really wanted that father of her kid found as desperately as someone in the situation she claims she is in should, anyone who works with her on this would have from her a file several pages long of little details she remembers about him, his apartment and his stuff. You go into someone's apartment for anything (and especially for sex) a few times, you notice stuff. What empties are next to their kitchen bin, what their alarm clock looked like, whether they are circumcised, what shampoo they use, what brand their jeans are, what scars they have, what type of underpants, whether they leave their ironing board out, what sort of bed, what sort of bedsides, size of their shoes, things they drop in small talk, do they do their dishes, what are their water glasses, do they were a necklace or an earring etc etc etc

She's been locked up for years. If this guy is the key to getting her out, every night she should be laying in bed with pencil and paper handy, trying to bring up in her mind what it was like with the father of her kid, noting down even trivial things. Was his toilet clean, did his furniture look like handmedowns or like it had been bought new, what aftershave, what comb, what brush, did he have books, did he have sports equipment, did he have anything that looked homemade, what tv did he own, what video player...

You would do that in her situation, I would do that in her situation. We'd be racking our minds for that one thing that might be able to used to jog someone's mind, support that a man someone suggests is him actually is him, or to get a clearer overall picture of what he was. We'd be noting everything down so we don't forget it. We'd send copies to anyone who would listen, please find this man, please. Doesn't seem to me like she's doing this. Seems to me she answers questions that are put to her and that's all. Which to me means she wants us to think he's out there but she's not so keen on him being found.
 
A former prosecutor has apologised for comments he made on-camera as part of the ABC's explosive investigative series Exposed: The Case of Keli Lane.

Nicholas Cowdery, who was the Director of Public Prosecutions at the time of Keli Lane's murder trial, had told the ABC he did not think the convicted baby killer was a risk to the community.

"[She wouldn't] go around killing other people's babies," he said, adding with a chuckle: "She seemed to be a bit of a risk to the virile young male portion of the community. That's not grounds for putting her in prison, of course."

Reactions to the 72-year-old's comments ranged from discomfort among some viewers to outright anger that a former prosecutor would speculate about an accused's sex life. Lane was sentenced to 18 years in prison in 2010 for the murder of her baby daughter, Tegan, 14 years earlier. However, the former water polo player has always maintained her innocence.
ABC's Exposed: Former prosecutor apologises over Keli Lane comments
 
I have a feeling she does not know what she did with Tegan, it's locked away with other stuff. But she does believe her own lies because they are protection for her psychological frailty. I would have been just as concerned as the other SW, especially as she went on to have more child/ren. I don't judge her to be risky towards her other child/ren because it's overt and everyone knows about it. The timing was right.
The other children were not in the right place at the right time, so they were shrouded in a secrecy aided and abetted by insane levels of denial.
(snipped; BBM)
I would demur. If Keli is someone who can harm children and forget about it, that is dangerous. "Everyone" knowing and taking precautions, that doesn't make her not dangerous. And what about people who don't know or whom she manages to convince that she is innocent? What if she has a grandchild? What does her daughter believe about her? To be sure Keli won't have the same surface motive for harming a grandchild as she did Tegan, but the surface motives are so weak--I can't be bothered with contraception, I want to go to a wedding--that the absence of those particular motives is no guarantee of safety.

It was mentioned in the first episode that women's water polo is a rough sport. I knew some water polo players and it was said to me about thirty years ago that one of the known tactics was to kick pregnant women in the belly. I suspect that in playing while pregnant, Keli was at some level aiming to lose the child. I wonder whether that had worked for her before.
 
(snipped; BBM)
I would demur. If Keli is someone who can harm children and forget about it, that is dangerous. "Everyone" knowing and taking precautions, that doesn't make her not dangerous. And what about people who don't know or whom she manages to convince that she is innocent? What if she has a grandchild? What does her daughter believe about her? To be sure Keli won't have the same surface motive for harming a grandchild as she did Tegan, but the surface motives are so weak--I can't be bothered with contraception, I want to go to a wedding--that the absence of those particular motives is no guarantee of safety.

It was mentioned in the first episode that women's water polo is a rough sport. I knew some water polo players and it was said to me about thirty years ago that one of the known tactics was to kick pregnant women in the belly. I suspect that in playing while pregnant, Keli was at some level aiming to lose the child. I wonder whether that had worked for her before.
The problem for me is, in not knowing the truth, one can never be sure how much risk she may pose, in the past and in the future, even though she is now behind bars, after a rather problematic trial.

I would like to call mine the Truth project, not the Innocence project.
 
Wherever Tegan is I pray that she is at peace. If she is alive, I hope she is loved and happy. If dead, then I hope her soul is resting in peace. Regardless of whether Keli gave Tegan away or disposed of her in some other way I think that Keli has some serious mental and emotional issues that are beyond our understanding. I feel quite a lot of empathy towards Keli and the expression "mad or bad?" comes to mind. If she had been found to be mad with postnatal depression I wonder what her sentence would have been. I really don't think jail is where she belongs. Anyway, regardless of our thoughts on her innocence or guilt, I think that because there are so many problems with the case, some action needs to be taken to reassess her conviction.
 
I'd like to know if she stopped drinking during the pregnancies too. If she was in denial, or thinking she'd get an abortion soon, she could well have been drinking heaps at that time to keep up the cover-up. In the 90s people weren't as strict about staying alcohol-free during pregnancy, although most people just had a glass of wine here and there, not massive nights out. The kids she adopted out might have had health complications from her cover-up.

She didn't. She kept up appearances drinking at pubs with friends, etc.

Thanks soso. Keli’s early departure from hospital may have ensured that it wasn’t done — or perhaps she refused it.

She refused screening.

"Registered nurse Karen Johns, who said it was highly unusual for a new mother to advise a hospital she would not be taking up the post-natal care she had been offered.

Ms Johns told the court that Ms Lane had advised the Ryde Domiciliary Midwifery Program on September 16, 1996, that she did not need newborn screening test to be carried out by the service as planned.

Ms Lane advised nurses that her homebirth midwife - who had not been involved in the birth of baby Tegan - would be providing her post natal care."

"It was unusual, it was out of the ordinary," Ms Johns said.
 
There are some good points in the analysis, obviously Professor Buist knows her subject matter. But I can't say I agree with her conclusion,
These are acts of panic, not planning. And not acts of someone who saw herself as doing the right thing under difficult circumstances on each of the other occasions

I can actually believe that Keli's planning turned into panic around midday, 3 hours before she meant to turn up at her parents house, when hospital staff was still preparing for her discharge. A nurse had noted her "anxious to leave". Her self imposed deadline could lead to tremendous stress and then panic.

In a panic state, she might not even remember what she did afterwards. Oh yeah I must have given baby to the father because what else could I have done? ....

Add to that her fragile physical state. I think the trial document says she lost a significant amount of blood from complications during childbirth. That might also have an effect, causing confusion, fogginess perhaps.
 
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There are some good points in the analysis, obviously Professor Buist knows her subject matter. But I can't say I agree with her conclusion,


I can actually believe that Keli's planning turned into panic around midday, 3 hours before she meant to turn up at her parents house, when hospital staff was still preparing for her discharge. A nurse had noted her "anxious to leave". Her self imposed deadline could lead to tremendous stress and then panic.

In a panic state, she might not even remember what she did afterwards. Oh yeah I must have given baby to the father because what else could I have done? ....

Add to that her fragile physical state. I think the trial document says she lost a significant amount of blood from complications during childbirth. That might also have an effect, causing confusion, fogginess perhaps.

I have to add that I am not a doctor. But I know there are many specialisations in forensic medicine. Maybe another expert needs to examine this case, since mental illness is ruled out.

MOO
 
I have to add that I am not a doctor. But I know there are many specialisations in forensic medicine. Maybe another expert needs to examine this case, since mental illness is ruled out.

MOO
Do you mean an expert in normal, as opposed to abnormal, psychology? Or do you mean an expert in non-mental medical issues?
 
She didn't. She kept up appearances drinking at pubs with friends, etc.



She refused screening.

"Registered nurse Karen Johns, who said it was highly unusual for a new mother to advise a hospital she would not be taking up the post-natal care she had been offered.

Ms Johns told the court that Ms Lane had advised the Ryde Domiciliary Midwifery Program on September 16, 1996, that she did not need newborn screening test to be carried out by the service as planned.

Ms Lane advised nurses that her homebirth midwife - who had not been involved in the birth of baby Tegan - would be providing her post natal care."

"It was unusual, it was out of the ordinary," Ms Johns said.

Thanks TO. Could you please provide a link for the quoted information?
 

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