Jacques started taking cannabis – at one point using £60 worth of the drug every day or two – and developed mental problems. By the time she smothered daughter Skye, when the infant was seven months old, she was suffering from delusions and had become convinced neighbours were out to harm her and the child.
. . . She started to suffer delusions, suggesting there was a body in her attic and she was being filmed in her home. Her GP prescribed Prozac and referred her to a counsellor.
The court heard that the night before Skye died in October, Jacques had been smoking cannabis and drinking alcohol at a party. When her husband woke up at their home in Leicester the following morning, he went downstairs to discover Jacques clutching the ‘obviously blue’ body of their daughter.
She was holding a blade in her hand and said: ‘What have I done?’ She then slashed her own wrists as her husband – who was not in court – struggled to disarm her. Jacques then slashed her neck with a carving knife before she was again disarmed and taken to hospital.
Skye suffered no visible injuries and the cause of death was given as smothering. Jacques needed 40 stitches for her injuries. Police arrested her in hospital on suspicion of murder and she admitted what she had done. She told police: ‘I just thought we could go to sleep and we would both be safe.’
The court heard Jacques had tried to commit suicide the week before she smothered her child.
Why wasn’t this woman arrested for illegal substance abuse? Her doctor knew, her counsellor knew, and all the partygoers knew that she was breaking the law. If any one of them had cared at all, if the police had been called and had then themselves cared enough about the law to prosecute her, this woman’s baby might well be alive today. But in our ‘enlightened’ secular society, no-one gives a damn.
