Joanne Sharkey broke down in tears as she learned her fate
Joanne Sharkey broke down in tears as she learned her fate
Joanne Sharkey was today handed a suspended prison sentence for suffocating her new born baby to death before keeping his existence a secret for more than 25 years. The body of the infant, who came to be known as Baby Callum, was discovered in woodland close to Gulliver’s World in Warrington on March 14 1998.
Joanne Sharkey, of Denham Close in Croxteth, was subsequently charged with murdering the tiny boy, who was seemingly minutes old when he was suffocated, and concealing the birth of a child in April 2024. But the 55-year-old admitted manslaughter on the basis of diminished responsibility, as well as concealing the birth of a child, on the day she was due to stand trial at Liverpool Crown Court.
These pleas were deemed acceptable by the Crown Prosecution Service, with the count of murder not being pursued further by the prosecution after it was deemed that the post-natal depression she had been suffering following the birth of her first child “substantially impaired her ability to form rational judgement and exercise self control”.
Sharkey, who wore a white jacket and had her brown hair clipped back, returned to the same court to be sentenced today, Friday, and was handed a two-year imprisonment suspended for two years. She was also told to complete a rehabilitation activity requirement of up to 30 days and a 12-month mental health treatment requirement.
Visibly shaking and repeatedly dabbing her eyes with a tissue in the dock throughout the hearing, she broke down and cried as she learned her sentence. This is every word High Court judge Mrs Justice Easy said to Sharkey as she was allowed to walk free from court:
“The events that bring us to this court are both terrible and tragic. On a date between the 8th and 11th of March 1998, you, Mrs Sharkey, gave birth to an infant boy. You were alone and gave birth unaided in the bathroom of your family home.
“It is accepted that, at the time, you were experiencing an abnormality of mental functioning. Specifically, you were suffering from moderately severe to severe depression, and this substantially impaired your ability to form a rational judgment and exercise self-control.
“The infant was born alive at full term, but died shortly afterwards. You subsequently placed the body into bin bags and into your car, driving for some 35 to 40 minutes from your home to a wooded area in Warrington and leaving the bags containing the body a little way beside a public path.
“We know this was during the early afternoon of Wednesday the 11th of March 1998 because you were seen by a witness, and the body was then uncovered by another witness on the morning of the 14th of March 1998. Medical evidence suggests the baby was born a few days earlier but we cannot be sure exactly when, nor can we know precisely how he died.
“By your pleas, however, you have accepted your guilt for the manslaughter of your child by reason of diminished responsibility and of endeavouring to conceal the birth of that child. It is for these matters that I must now sentence you.
“To understand the tragic nature of these events, it is necessary to go back to the period of 1997 to 1998 when you were 28, living with your husband, who you had been with since your teens, and your son, then a toddler under the age of three. You had returned to full time work after maternity leave and seemed to be coping, but that was a façade. You were in fact suffering from post-natal depression.
“This was not a case of the baby blues but a far more sustained period of depression which impacted upon you physically and mentally. You experienced profound sleep disturbance, exhaustion, heightened anxiety, and chronic feelings of inadequacy. Your relationship with your husband deteriorated and you suffered a loss of appetite and significant weight loss.
“Had your depression been diagnosed at the time, I have no doubt your symptoms would have been viewed as requiring urgent clinical attention. Unfortunately, however, those symptoms also included extreme and irrational fears that you would be seen as a bad mother and your son would be taken away, and so you sought to conceal what was happening to you.
“It is further apparent that your inability to seek help with your depression was informed by what might, at a minimum, be characterised as personality disorder traits. You withhold descriptions of distress or other mental experiences and struggle to describe your feelings.
“Whether such characteristics are to be associated with a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder or other embedded personality traits, I am satisfied that this background, coupled with depression and the irrational fears you suffered following the birth of your first child, explains why you told no-one what you were suffering.
“While your husband and your close friend Susan Hanley saw you were not your normal self, you were able to brush off their concerns, distancing yourself from your husband, who was preoccupied with work, and closing yourself off from your friend. It was in this context that, about a year after your son’s birth, you became pregnant a second time, something you became aware of at around the four month stage.
“Although your husband was the father and you were in a settled and supportive environment, you could not cope with the idea of this second pregnancy. At the time you were underweight, and your pregnancy was not detected by others around you. Your relationship with your husband was under strain, and even he did not realise you were pregnant. You sought no medical help and mentioned nothing to your family.
“This was not simply a matter of you not wanting to be pregnant. After all, had you wanted to end the pregnancy without informing anyone, you would have been able to seek a termination and not risk your condition being discovered, as it might so easily have been. Rather, your mental ill health was such that you effectively denied the fact of your pregnancy, even to yourself.
“On the evidence available, I am satisfied that you have little recollection of this time. You have blanked it out. That, I am clear, is also true of the subsequent labour and your experience of giving birth. There is no suggestion that you have tried to avoid telling the truth, but your account has been characterised by problems of recollection.
“You have been unable to recall the day or time, and while you thought you were by yourself, in the bathroom, and that you had a feeling of shock and panic, you could not recall the actual length of the labour or how it progressed and have no recollection of tearing the umbilical cord.
“At times, you have described the baby coming out when you were standing which might provide an explanation for some of the bruising to the baby’s head. But you have also said how, as a result of your frequent revisiting of the incident, you have felt increasingly uncertain of your memories.
“The psychiatrist, Dr Plunkett, who has spent some eight hours in his various examinations with you, has described your account of this event as an experience of derealisation, something often associated with an intense dissociative experience arising during a period of severe stress, distress or trauma and where the sufferer can perceive the world, or their immediate context, as unreal, distant, or distorted and which may give rise to a numbing of pain sensation, which would be consistent with the fact that you cannot recall suffering labour pains during the birth, although, given that this was an unassisted vaginal delivery, that would be unlikely. You have said you did not look at the baby and can only recall what might have been a groaning or gurgling noise, not the cry of a new born child.
“Although you told the police that you think you put your hand down to the baby’s nose and mouth, you were later unsure whether that was an accurate recollection or whether you were trying to make sense of things you were being told. Your sense of confusion is apparent in your comment that: ‘Even afterwards, I felt it wasn’t me. At times I thought it wasn’t real, or was it?’.
“Although we know that you must have put tissue into the baby’s mouth and throat, you have no recollection of this. Equally, although you can remember the basic action of wrapping the baby, you cannot recall fetching the bags in which his body was found, still less of your perceptions or feelings at the time.
“You have a memory of placing the bag carrying the baby in the footwell of the car but not of any awareness of when this was or whether the baby was then alive or dead. You had no memory of where you went, quote ‘I could have been in Scotland’, or of events until you returned home and later heard about the finding of the baby’s body on the news.
“It has never been possible for the medical cause of death to be ascertained. The autopsy findings did not establish that the infant died of asphyxia caused by another party, but did not exclude that possibility.
“Although I cannot be sure of the precise means by which this child died, the bruising and injuries apparent post mortem do enable me to be sure that you caused injuries to your baby after he had been born alive, most likely depriving him of oxygen by covering his nose and mouth or placing tissues into his mouth and throat.
“It is, however, agreed by the experts that your mental ill health substantially impaired your ability to form a rational judgment and exercise self control. There is no evidence of premeditation and nothing else can explain your actions other than this abnormality in your mental functioning.
“In considering your psychiatric state in the period following the death, Dr Kennedy, instructed by the prosecution, has observed that there is evidence that you did then possess executive functioning skills and consequential thinking. You cleaned the bathroom and must have disposed of the placenta and you transported the body in two bags, presumably to prevent it being seen or blood being deposited in the car.
“That said, Dr Kennedy also acknowledges that the trauma of the birth would be expected to have caused a further deterioration in your mental health. Certainly, there is evidence of a continued sense of dislocation.
“Driving away from your home, you had no sense of where you were or whether this was immediately following the birth or some hours or even days afterwards. You have never been able to describe your actions and have no recollection of what you did with the placenta.
“There is no reason why you would now lie about any of this, and I find that your mental disorder continued in the aftermath of the birth, accepting the view expressed by Dr Plunkett, instructed by the defence), that your depressive state would then have been complicated and exacerbated by the highly exceptional and traumatic nature of the birth.
“There was, of course, a lot of publicity about the discovery of the body at the time, particularly locally. You tried to avoid watching the news but suffered severe nightmares and would wake up sweating and shaking.
“You continued to say nothing to your husband, although, in your despair, you often thought about walking away, of leaving your house and family. In the months and years that followed, you developed symptoms of anxiety and panic, remaining in low mood and avoiding family or socialising and becoming increasingly withdrawn.”
High Court judge Mrs Justice Easy continued: “Asking myself, however, what is the shortest term commensurate with the seriousness of the offence, I return to the particular tragedy of this case and the fact that you have lived with the knowledge of what you did for over 25 years. Of course, it could be said that it was open to you to confess your crime earlier, but I note what you told the police. You had thought about this ‘a million times’ but ‘couldn’t actually say the words’.
“That can be seen as consistent with what has been described as your personality disorder traits, or with Dr Van-Leeson’s diagnosis of ASD. Certainly, I am clear that this is not a case where you had a sense of having gotten away with it. Rather, regardless of how you presented to others, you lived isolated with this terrible and tragic knowledge for quarter of a century.
“You have, furthermore, then had these proceedings hanging over you. Although I make no formal deductions for the time you have spent on remand and qualifying bail, about 20 days short of a year in total, it is not irrelevant for me to have regard to the effect that this has had on you.
“In the exceptional and particular circumstances of this case, notwithstanding all the aggravating features that I have earlier referred to, I consider that the appropriate term is one of three years. From that term you are to be afforded credit for your plea. Although your pleas were not entered until the morning of the trial, your counsel have pointed out that you could not be properly advised until expert evidence was available relevant to the legal issues that had been identified.
“First, there was a real issue as to whether the child had been born alive, as to which your recollection was genuinely unreliable and the pathology evidence was not clear cut. Second, the question arose as to whether there was evidence to support a partial defence of diminished responsibility on which the burden would be on the defence and which could only properly be advanced on the basis of psychiatric evidence, something made all the more complex by the historic nature of the case.
“Having regard to the guideline for reduction in sentence for a guilty plea, I am satisfied this is a case that properly falls within exception at F1. It was necessary for you to receive advice and have sight of expert evidence in order to understand whether you were in fact and law guilty of the offences charged. The timing of your plea was not the result of a tactical decision, but a consequence of a genuine and reasonable need for clarification of the medical and legal position.
“That said, you did not then indicate your preparedness to plead until the afternoon before your trial. Your counsel point out that it was only on the 4th of March 2025 that the prosecution’s psychiatric report was available, but that would not have prevented you making your position clear once your own evidence was available.
“That said, I acknowledge that some time will have been required for your advisers to consider the reports in full, the final pathology report only being available on the 10th of February 2025, and to form an assessment as to the potential interplay between the psychiatric report from Dr Plunkett, dated the 18th of December 2024, and the psychological report from Dr Van-Leeson, dated the 11th of February 2025.
“Having reflected on this point, I have reached the conclusion that, in the highly unusual circumstances of this case, it would have been unreasonable to expect you to indicate your guilty pleas sooner than was in fact done and, therefore, that you are entitled to a reduction of one third on both counts, resulting in a sentence of two years.
“Having arrived at a sentence that, allowing credit for your pleas, is of two years imprisonment, it is open to me to suspend that sentence, having regard to the factors identified in the imposition guideline. You present no risk or danger to the public and it cannot be said that you have a history of poor compliance with court orders.
“On the other hand, and without minimising the effect this would have on your family, your immediate imprisonment would not result in significant harmful impact on others, albeit you have strong personal mitigation and there is a realistic prospect of rehabilitation. The real question is whether appropriate punishment can only be achieved by a term of immediate custody.
“Having carefully considered this issue, I am satisfied that this very sad case calls for compassion. No useful purpose would be achieved by immediate imprisonment and I consider that appropriate punishment can be achieved by a custodial term that is suspended. I am persuaded by the pre-sentence report that it would be appropriate to make this sentence subject to 30 rehabilitation activity requirement days and to a primary care mental health treatment requirement for a period of 12 months.
“The latter condition is one to which you have expressed your willingness to comply and arrangements made, to be overseen by Dr Mark Walton, clinical psychologist at NHS Merseycare. Having regard to the medical reports, I am satisfied that, while your current mental condition does not warrant the making of a hospital or guardianship order, it requires, and may be susceptible to, treatment, which would be difficult for you to access in a custodial environment.
“I am further satisfied that these requirements will assist you to address your offending as part of your longer term rehabilitation. You, and anyone listening to, or reading, these sentencing remarks, should, however, be clear. A suspended sentence is still a sentence of imprisonment and amounts to a punishment for your crimes.
“Can I ask you, please, to try to stand. I formally record a verdict of not guilty to murder. As regards the offences to which you have pleaded guilty, the seriousness of these offences is such that neither a fine alone nor a community order can be justified. On count one, for the offence of manslaughter by reason of diminished responsibility, I sentence you to two years imprisonment suspended for two years.
“On count two, for the offence of endeavouring to conceal the birth of a child, I sentence you to six months imprisonment concurrent to the term imposed on count one, also suspended for two years. If, in the next two years you commit any offence, whether or not it is of the same type for which I am sentencing you today, you will be brought back to court and it is likely that this sentence will be brought into operation, either in full or in part.
“Also, for the next 12 months, you will be subject to a 30-day rehabilitation activity requirement. That means that you must meet the officer supervising this requirement as and when required and must attend and cooperate fully with any activities that are arranged. You will also be subject to a primary care mental health treatment requirement for a period of 12 months, to be overseen by Dr Mark Walton, clinical psychologist at NHS Merseycare.
“If you do not comply with these requirements, you will be in breach of this order, which means you will be brought back to court and you will be liable to serve the sentence either in whole or in part. In passing this sentence, I make clear that I have made no deductions for the time you have spent on remand or on qualifying bail. That time should, however, be deducted if the sentence is activated. The statutory surcharge will apply.”