"Light sentence for baby death appalling"

Edmonton Sun, By MINDELLE JACOBS, January 29, 2003

While the law has evolved over the centuries to reflect changing norms, we're still as uncomfortable as ever with the notion of female criminality.

How else to explain the sentence - if you can call it that - Sabrina Gail Milne received Monday for letting her 18-month-old daughter starve to death?

Milne fed baby Alissa for the last time one Friday last January in Grande Prairie, shut the bedroom door and then pretended she didn't exist.

Ignoring her baby's cries, she did household chores and chatted with family and friends on the phone. Two days later, she looked in on Alissa who was long dead.

"She knew what she was doing," said provincial court Judge Gary Mitchell. "She put her own comfort and convenience and health ahead of her child's."

Too bad the denunciation wasn't accompanied by an appropriate penalty. Milne, now 23, pleaded guilty in July to failing to provide the necessities of life. The maximum punishment is two years in jail.

Her sentence? A nine-month conditional term to be spent at her mom's house, followed by 27 months of probation.

She also has to go for counselling, take prescribed medication and not look after children under 12.

But she has no curfew and isn't required to perform any community service as restitution for her crime.

Now, there's a warning for other young mothers who may be contemplating letting their kids starve to death because they're bored with parenting: Leave your children to die and you get to go home and be a little girl
again.

Milne, by the way, has expressed no remorse for her actions. Her lawyer said she was depressed and overwhelmed by the burden of motherhood.

"She was in agony over this. She's not a monster, she's just a young person who couldn't cope," he said.

What a bunch of malarkey. She didn't have several toddlers running around underfoot. She was only caring for one child and didn't have the added stress of working outside the home.

She could have picked up the phone and called a friend, relative or community clinic for help. She didn't bother.

She had the love and support of her trucker husband, Jamie, who called that Friday night from B.C. and heard Alissa crying in the background.

Milne laughed and joked on the phone and then lied about Alissa's hunger cries, saying the baby was teething.

The couple split up soon after Alissa's death and they are now divorcing. Jamie doesn't know whether he can ever face having another child.

He has moved to a different city to start a new life. He's disgusted that the Crown dropped the original charge of criminal negligence causing death and bitter at the light sentence Milne eventually received.

The prosecution didn't think it could prove its case under the Read More ..rious charge, says Alberta Justice spokesman Bart Johnson. For a criminal negligence conviction, you have to prove wanton or reckless disregard for the lives or safety of others, he says. Gee, that pretty much sums up Milne's despicable behaviour.

In fact, she could just as easily have been charged with manslaughter. Instead, she was charged with a crime that has nothing to do with homicide.

But you can bet that if Jamie had killed Alissa, he would probably have been charged with murder.

Alberta Justice insists gender played no role in the case, but you have to wonder.

Our hearts tend to melt when criminals are female.

"There's an implicit societal assumption that when women kill they're psychologically damaged but when men kill, well, that's what they do," says U of A criminal law professor Sanjeev Anand.

"Female offenders who harm their children don't fit our paradigm of the criminal,"  he says.

It's about time we shook off such delusions. It devalues the lives of poor dead children and perpetuates the myth that women are simply victims of their hormones.