A MOTHER'S TRIAL - paperback print edition - by Nancy Wright FACT: Priscilla and Steve Phillips adopt a Korean baby. Shortly afterwards little Tia begins developing strange symptoms. In and out of the hospital for months, she finally succumbs. Cause of death: unknown. FACT: The Phillipses adopt a second Korean infant named Mindy. Once again the same symptoms develop. Near death, the child is taken away to intensive care, away from any interaction with her mother. The child recovers. FACT: Mindy is removed from the Phillipses' home. Months later she is adopted by a new couple. After a few weeks in her new home, she falls ill once again. As far as anyone knew, Priscilla Phillips was the perfect mother: A pillar of her church, a social worker, a devoted wife and loving mother of two sons of her own. Priscilla lavished endless love and attention on little Tia, and later on her sister Mindy. To this day she claims total innocence of any wrongdoing. Yet she was arrested and tried for murder. Was she a mother who literally loved her children to death? A woman so desperate to be needed that she'd take any risk, pay any price? Here is her incredible true story.

Updated and revised with seven new chapters, a new introduction, and a new resources section, this landmark book is invaluable for women facing a custody battle. It was the first to break the myth that mothers receive preferential treatment over fathers in custody disputes. Although mothers generally retain custody when fathers choose not to fight for it, fathers who seek custody often win—not because the mother is unfit or the father has been the primary caregiver but because, as Phyllis Chesler argues, women are held to a much higher standard of parenting. Incorporating findings from years of research, hundreds of interviews, and international surveys about child-custody arrangements, Chesler argues for new guidelines to resolve custody disputes and to prevent the continued oppression of mothers in custody situations. This book provides a philosophical and psychological perspective as well as practical advice from one of the country’s leading matrimonial lawyers. Both an indictment of a discriminatory system and a call to action over motherhood under siege, Mothers on Trial is essential reading for anyone concerned either personally or professionally with custody rights and the well-being of the children involved.

Since the early 1990s, unexplained infant death has been reformulated as a criminal justice problem within many western societies. This shift has produced wrongful convictions in more than one jurisdiction. This book uses a detailed case study of the murder trial and appeals of Kathleen Folbigg to examine the pragmatics of proof beyond a reasonable doubt. It explores how legal process, medical knowledge and expectations of motherhood work together when a mother is charged with killing infants who have died in mysterious circumstances. The author argues that Folbigg, who remains in prison, was wrongly convicted. The book also employs Folbigg's trial and appeals to consider what lessons courts have learned from prior wrongful convictions, such as those of Sally Clark and Angela Cannings. The author's research demonstrates that the Folbigg court was misled about the state of medical knowledge regarding infant death, and that the case proceeded on the incorrect assumption that behavioural and scientific evidence provided independent proofs of guilt. Individual chapters critically assess the relationships between medical research and expert testimony; the operation of unexamined cultural assumptions about good mothering; and the manner in which contested cases are reported by the press as overwhelming.

In 1686 in Geneva, a single mother named Jeanne Catherine Thomasset is charged with poisoning two young children: her own illegitimate daughter and the son of a rural wet nurse. So begins a harrowing criminal trial during which authorities interrogate Jeanne Catherine several times, sometimes with torture, to determine the truth. The Trial of Jeanne Catherine is a suspenseful historical mystery that offers students the opportunity to learn about motherhood, child rearing, gender, religion, local politics, and the practice of criminal justice in early modern Europe. This edition provides the complete trial transcript as well as the deliberations of the Genevan authorities and relevant correspondence.

Lacey Spears made international headlines in January 2015 when she was charged with the “depraved mind” murder of her five-year-old son Garnett. Prosecutors alleged that the 27-year old mother had poisoned him with high concentrations of salt through his stomach tube. To the outside world Lacey had seemed like the perfect mother, regularly posting dramatic updates on her son’s harrowing medical problems. But in reality, Lacey was a text book case of Munchausen by Proxy Syndrome. From the time he was an infant, she deliberately made Garnett sick to elicit sympathy from medical professionals, as well as her hundreds of followers on Facebook and other social media. When a Westchester County jury found her guilty of killing Garnett in April 2015, she was sentenced to twenty years to life in prison. Using Lacey’s own never-before-seen Facebook, Twitter, and blog posts, an exclusive prison interview with Lacey herself, as well as interviews with her family and the three police investigators who broke the case, My Sweet Angelgives the definitive account of this extraordinary case that shocked the world. The Lacey Spears story will be the subject of an hour-long special on Discovery ID, featuring author John Glatt, and CBS 48-Hours is working on a primetime special on the case.

Now available in paperback, Dasha Tolstikova’s acclaimed graphic novel A Year Without Mom follows twelve-year-old Dasha through a year full of turmoil after her mother leaves for America. It is the early 1990s in Moscow, and political change is in the air. But Dasha is more worried about her own challenges as she negotiates family, friendships and school without her mother. Just as she begins to find her own feet, she gets word that she is to join her mother in America — a place that seems impossibly far from everything and everyone she loves. Dasha Tolstikova’s major talent is on full display in this gorgeous and subtly illustrated graphic novel. Key Text Features map Correlates to the Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts: CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.5.7 Analyze how visual and multimedia elements contribute to the meaning, tone, or beauty of a text (e.g., graphic novel, multimedia presentation of fiction, folktale, myth, poem). CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.6.3 Describe how a particular story's or drama's plot unfolds in a series of episodes as well as how the characters respond or change as the plot moves toward a resolution.