It has been, as the judge Mr Justice Garnham said, a trial bound to provoke very strong emotions, a case that evokes sympathy for the victim and the killer.
The death of the newborn baby Stanley Mayo, who lived for a couple of hours at most before dying of injuries inflicted by his mother, Paris Mayo, is tragic.
But the story of Paris, who became pregnant aged 14 without anybody realising and gave birth alone and in complete silence because she feared her parents’ reaction is also deeply troubling.
Now 19, Paris told Worcester crown court how she started having sex with boys when she was 13. “I guess it was a way to get people to like me,” she said. “I was insecure about the way I looked. I wished I was thin. I’m quite tall and I felt I stuck out.”
She slept with Stanley’s father “once or twice” in the summer of 2018. Asked why he hadn’t worn a condom, Paris said: “He told me he didn’t like it. I wanted him to like me so would do whatever he wanted to keep him happy.”
She became pregnant and began to put on weight, suffering bouts of sickness and abdominal and back pain. Worried about the reaction she would get at home, she tried to convince herself she couldn’t be pregnant and denied it if anyone asked.
Her brother, George, noticed she had put on weight but put it down to the family being “big boned”. At school she kept on doing PE and dancing, wearing baggy clothes to hide her weight gain.
In October 2018, Paris went to see a nurse practitioner about her aches and pains. The nurse asked if she was sexually active. Paris replied she wasn’t, which was true at that precise time and her pregnancy wasn’t noticed.
Paris is close to George and her mother, Coralie, but had a difficult relationship with her late father, Patrick. “He was a bully and made us feel really small,” Paris said. “He would shout at us, telling us we were worthless, we were never going to get anywhere. We were stupid, we didn’t live up to his standards. It made me feel horrible.” She knew he would hate the idea of her being a pregnant single teenage mum.
She went into labour on the evening of 23 March 2019 downstairs in the family’s semi-detached council house in the Herefordshire town of Ross-on-Wye after her parents and brother had gone to bed.
It was only at this point that Paris said she accepted she must have been pregnant after all. She felt dizzy and confused and in severe pain but did not scream or shout, an effort described by childbirth experts as extraordinary.
Paris said she was standing at a window when the baby “fell out”, landing on his head. She claimed that when she first saw the dark-haired child on the floor, he was not making any noise and his eyes were closed. The umbilical cord had separated from her, she said, and was wrapped twice around his neck.
The prosecution claimed her account was false. It said she must have known she was pregnant and had planned to kill Stanley as soon as he was born.
Experts said it was “very likely” she would have known she was pregnant, not least because her periods must have stopped and it was “difficult to imagine” she had not felt the baby kicking.
The prosecution alleged she hit, stamped on, or dropped Stanley and some time later, when she realised he was still alive, forced cotton wool balls into his mouth to suffocate him.
After his death, Paris put Stanley’s body into a black bin bag. “I didn’t pick him up and just chuck him in there, because that’s horrible,” she said. “I cuddled him goodbye.”
She went to bed and asked George to put the bag it into the outside bin, lying that it was full of sick. But Coralie noticed it was heavy and blood-streaked. She peered in and saw the body.
The emergency services were called but it was clear the child was dead and Paris’s father said he should be named Stanley.
Asked why she had not called out for help, Paris said her parents would have been “disappointed” in her and she was “scared” of her father’s reaction.
Paris said she loved Stanley and often thought of what he could have been had he lived. She insisted she had not deliberately harmed him. The jury clearly disbelieved her.
