3 hours ago
3
Diagnosing Murder, Episode 1, is available right now. Click here to listen.
It was an unremarkable October night in Melbourne’s northern suburbs when Kabir* gently jiggled his daughter’s chin, trying to prompt the baby to smile for a video he wanted to send to his family back home in India.
Four minutes later, his wife Dipika* woke as Kabir hurried into her room. In his arms, their daughter Dua* lay limp. They called an ambulance but there was a delay, so they raced Dua to hospital.
“I started giving her mouth-to-mouth. I am not a medical expert, so I thought maybe she’s not able to breathe,” Dipika recalls four years later. “What’s going on? I just ... couldn’t understand. I literally thought she’s dying.”
Kabir and Dipika expected their daughter would receive the best treatment possible, and she did. But doctors also raised suspicions that the parents might have been responsible for her injuries.
In the case that followed, police and the child protection service agreed that in the four minutes after Kabir shot that sweet video, he had grabbed his baby and shaken her so violently that blood vessels in her skull and the tissue behind her eyes had started to bleed.
The accusation changed the young family’s lives forever. And they’re not the only ones.
Click the player below to listen to the full first episode of Diagnosing Murder, or click here.
For decades, families in Australia and overseas have been accused of one of the worst crimes imaginable – child abuse. Diagnosing Murder is an investigative podcast about parents who have had their children taken away, sat in the dock and even done time in prison. All for something they insist they didn’t do – shake their baby.
“I lost everything, and it went on for seven years,” says one young man. Another asks, “How do I have faith to take my child to a hospital, when the hospital has done this?”
Each case has its own unique story, but in hospital wards and courtrooms around the country, the evidence of a few influential child abuse specialists is still accepted, almost without question. And on their opinion, fathers, mothers, boyfriends and carers are being found guilty of serious charges, including murder, then serving long sentences in prison.
Can we trust the science behind shaken baby syndrome? Or are innocent people being locked up for a crime they never committed?
Dissenting voices have begun to emerge in Australia, and they’re suggesting our approach is flawed.
For more information on the four-part Diagnosing Murder investigative podcast, and to listen to the first episode, click here.
* Names are changed due to legal reasons.
Support is available from the National Sexual Assault, Domestic Family Violence Counselling Service at 1800RESPECT (1800 737 732).
Most Viewed in National
Loading
