by Melissa Hill
And his little sister missed nothing.
“Very well. Do you, then, or indeed the court, have any objection to it being read out loud by a third party?”
“Judge, how is this relevant? Mrs. Cooper’s missive to her social media followers is hardly of interest to the court.”
“Oh, it is indeed of interest, Mr. McGuinness, and also very pertinent to the witness’s current line of testimony, as we shall soon discover. Mrs. Cooper?”
Madeleine nodded almost imperceptibly and the judge waved a hand.
“Proceed, Counsel.”
At this, Alison stood up and cleared her throat. If, as it turned out, Madeleine did not want to read out her blog post, Declan felt it better and more impactful to have her words be read by another female, so as to closely associate them in the judge’s mind with the defendant.
Or to be more specific, her plea.
“‘I know there are a lot of opinions out there on what is happening at the moment with my daughter, my family and the O’Hara family. Yes, I openly admit that my husband and I did not vaccinate our children against MMR—we have never hidden that. We have our reasons—they are multifaceted and very personal—and I don’t wish to discuss them on a public forum. But, in short, and following extensive research and much soul-searching, we are not completely convinced of the MMR vaccine’s safety. The risk involved in participating with the vaccine program is one my husband and I could not, in good faith, take with our own children. The worry of bringing them to harm by doing so, taken against the risks borne from contracting a disease, were just too great. Additionally, my eldest son, Jake, had measles when he was eighteen months old, and, like my daughter, Clara, recovered well with no ill effects. For us, that risk of not vaccinating paid off, in that our children both contracted the disease yet remain healthy and unharmed.
“‘Kate O’Hara chose to take the same risk in not vaccinating, but for health rather than personal reasons. And while my daughter recovered well, her little girl, Rosie, is now fighting for her life in the hospital.
“‘I feel so sorry for Kate and would honestly do anything for her so that she could realize the same thing as I did: a happy, healthy child who has made a complete recovery.
“‘But since I can’t do that, all I can say is that I am sorry—from the bottom of my heart, I am sorry that this has happened, and for my part in it. If I could somehow go back in time to change things, I would. But I can’t.
“‘I cannot imagine how scared Kate must be at the moment, or how helpless she feels. And to the people who don’t know me, who are criticizing me and calling me a terrible parent, I want to say that I never claimed to be Mother of the Year, nor do I want to.
“‘Most of us parents are just trying to do the best we can, one day at a time. I will try to do better in the future, but, for what it’s worth, I’m truly, deeply sorry for any harm my actions might have caused.’”
At those words, a loud hush enveloped the courtroom and, having said her piece, Alison sat down.
“Quite the apology, for someone who says they don’t believe they are at fault,” Nevin commented, a quizzical expression on his face.
Declan felt elated. It was fairly categorical; in her own words, Madeleine Cooper outright admitted she was to blame for what had happened.
“When you wrote this piece, what were you sorry for, Mrs. Cooper?” pressed Nevin. “What did you mean when apologizing ‘for my part in it’?”
“That post was written in the heat of the moment,” she replied shortly, and Declan was pleased to note that finally she seemed to be losing her cool.
There it is: the chink in her armor. Her profile.
Nevin didn’t say anything; he was waiting for a continued explanation. “Mrs. Cooper?”
“Look,” she went on, a noticeable quiver now in her voice, “at the time I wrote that piece, I was receiving a lot of flack. People were sending me hate emails and posting insulting things online, telling me what a bad mother I was. Complete strangers were lambasting my parenting skills and calling me names. One journalist in particular was buzzing around, asking questions and stirring things up—all because of some personal beef she had against me. There was so much anger and pushback about the vaccination thing from people I don’t even know. And it just kept on coming and getting worse. I did feel sorry for Rosie and bad for Kate—I still do—and, of course, I felt guilty that my daughter was the one who’d emerged unscathed. I hadn’t been able to contact Kate or get through to her, and I wanted to get the word out that, yes, maybe I made some bad choices, but I wasn’t the villain people were making me out to be.”
“You mean you wanted to try and save face?”
“Objection!” shouted Michael McGuinness. “Judge, he’s badgering the witness.”
“Sustained. Mr. Nevin, please watch your tone.”
“Understood,” the barrister replied and Declan realized that it really didn’t matter if that last comment had been disallowed. They’d needed to paint Madeleine as self-serving—someone who perhaps even spoke out of both sides of her mouth—and it had worked.
“My apologies, Mrs. Cooper. Let me rephrase that question: Did you write the blog post because you felt personally responsible for Rosie O’Hara’s condition or for some other reason?”
Now they had just presented Madeleine Cooper with a complete Catch-22. If she answered yes, then it was an admission of guilt. If she said that it was for another reason, she came across as insincere—someone who would say anything in order to make herself look good.
Her truthful answer here would either win this case or at least show her true character to the judge, which might help them win it anyway. He thought for sure that McGuinness would offer a further objection—even though doing so might look like he, too, was trying to prevent an admission of guilt, which wouldn’t play well with the judge. But when the defense barrister’s silence continued, Declan knew that Madeleine was going to have to show her hand and answer the question truthfully.
“Mrs. Cooper?” Nevin pressed. “Did you hear my question? Did you write that post because you felt personally responsible for Rosie O’Hara’s condition?”
Madeleine took a deep breath. “No, I did not,” she said with resignation.
Nevin nodded and crossed his arms. “Then why did you write it?” he asked simply.
“Because I was upset by people harassing me online. And, on top of that, I’d just been offered a publishing deal for my blog, and I suppose didn’t want to mess that up,” she added defeatedly. Now she appeared resigned, as if there was no choice other than to come clean.
Pursing his lips and narrowing his eyes, the barrister continued, “Yes, I’m sure that is quite upsetting and hard to deal with.” Then, as quickly as he could, he added, “Being harassed online and potentially losing a publishing deal must be very upsetting indeed, compared to the stress, worry and fear associated with having a child seriously ill in the hospital.”
Madeleine’s face looked drawn and it was clear she was finding this line of questioning a lot more harrowing now. While this morning, she came across as reasonable and rational, now she was being painted as selfish and insincere.
Nevin was moving on. “So while you don’t accept responsibility for what has happened to Rosie directly, you do admit that by choosing not to vaccinate your daughter against serious disease, you increased the risk of her not only contracting such a disease, but passing infection on to others, do you not?”
She nodded uncertainly, but didn’t reply, clearly unsure as to what she should say.
“In which case,” Nevin continued, “it would be reasonable to assume you would be more inclined to evaluate such a risk when either of your children showed any signs of illness, would it not?”
“It’s not that simple. I had no idea measles could get that serious.”
; “But it did, didn’t it? Certainly in Rosie O’Hara’s case. Honestly, Mrs. Cooper, can you not appreciate how your and your husband’s actions, or should I say inaction in this situation—in not vaccinating your children—potentially made it far more dangerous for the general population should they fall ill? And in your blog post, by wishing you could go back and change things, you openly admit neglecting to take that fact into account when you sent your already sick daughter to school. You said it yourself this morning, Madeleine; you made a call. Turns out it was the wrong one.”
Madeleine sat forward, her expression pained as she realized the trap Nevin was laying for her. “But...I never meant for any of this to happen, of course I didn’t!”
“Don’t get me wrong, Mrs. Cooper, I do sympathize. We see such situations in this court all the time: the driver who didn’t mean to cause a fatal accident by sending a text while behind the wheel, the hospital staff member who made the wrong call during a routine procedure. The point is, these actions all have consequences, some of them devastating and, in Rosie O’Hara’s case, life changing. Just because you didn’t mean to do something doesn’t make those consequences go away. And in choosing not to vaccinate your child, Mrs. Cooper, and going against proven HSE-approved immunity recommendations, your inaction created a default duty to protect other children in your daughter’s immediate environment—an onus to be mindful of other, more vulnerable children such as Rosie. A duty of care you chose to ignore.”
There was complete silence in the court as Patrick Nevin’s words were driven home not just to the entire court, but Madeleine Cooper, too.
“I was just trying to keep them safe!” she argued, tears in her eyes. “I couldn’t do it...not after what I’d seen with Cameron, not when I’d seen a perfect little boy change before my eyes. All the medical assurances in the world can’t make you discount what you’ve seen with your own two eyes. I just couldn’t run that risk with my children and, yes, you’re right, I didn’t consider the effect this might have on others, or on the greater good. But for crying out loud, who the hell does?”
At this, an awed gasp cut across the courtroom from the media gallery.
Oh, wow, Declan thought. Here we go. After being made to stay silent for so long, now they were really seeing Mad Mum in all her glory.
She wiped at her eyes furiously, as if offended that tears should dare make an appearance in the court, but then she stared defiantly back at Nevin, evidently deciding to own what she had just said.
“If somebody told you to throw your child under a bus for the sake of the greater good, would you do it? Of course not! But that’s how the MMR vaccination felt to me. Why should making the best decision for my child somehow make me responsible for someone else’s? Any mother—if she truly felt her child was in danger—would do the very same thing. And, Kate, when it came down to it,” she pleaded, looking over at the plaintiff’s table, her blue eyes now boring directly into the other woman’s as she addressed her directly, “didn’t you make the very same call?”
49
“Kate, Kate! What is your response to Madeleine Cooper’s testimony this afternoon, particularly her assertion that you are just as much to blame for Rosie’s illness? Kate? Kate, do you think that Madeleine Cooper has a point? Did your own decision regarding Rosie’s vaccination—”
“Please, I just want to go home now. My daughter is waiting...”
“Let us past, please! It’s been a long enough week.”
“Kate, like Madeleine said in court, if you could go back in time and change things, would you alter any of the choices you made?”
“The very idea is nonsense, of course. But if I could go back in time, it would be to the dinosaur expo Rosie and I visited last Easter in the RDS, the last time I saw my daughter truly healthy and happy.”
“But, Kate...”
“Thank you. Please...we need to go. As Kate’s representative, I’ll be more than happy to make a full statement when all of this is over.”
* * *
A complete and utter disaster.
Madeleine still couldn’t get over just how badly her performance on the witness stand had turned out to be. How had she ever thought it would be a good idea?
She had known deep down that the damning blog post had been out there somewhere, but still, she’d been rattled by it. And then if that cocky barrister hadn’t done enough in getting her worked up by throwing her words back in her face, he’d also succeeded in making her angry enough to try to defend herself by basically suggesting that Kate was just as much at fault for Rosie’s troubles.
She could only imagine what the judge, let alone the public, thought of that.
Case closed.
Far from coming across as rational and sympathetic, now she looked like the world’s most heartless woman. Her head ached with the reality of it all and she felt like throwing up. She couldn’t bring herself to watch any news coverage of the trial or listen to what the talking heads on TV were saying; Madeleine already knew that they were going to lose and that when the trial resumed next week, the judge was sure to rule against them.
Their lives as they knew it were over. She and Tom were going to have to completely remake themselves—her especially. Now there was no going back to blogging, would definitely be no more radio or TV segments. All of that was over, for good. All her hard work undone. Publishing deal withdrawn, advertising pulled.
Nothing left of Mad Mum but a collection of blog posts that now, in hindsight, seemed trite and naive.
And when she considered the bigger problems they were about to have financially, as well as personally—after today Tom hadn’t known what to say to her—her head swam with anxiety.
Looking around her already scrupulously clean kitchen, Madeleine needed something to do. The kids were in bed and Tom had been holed up in his office since they got back from court. He said he had some work to catch up on, but Madeleine knew better. Likely her husband was examining their bank statements, checking their insurance limits and protections. Thanks to his wife’s performance that afternoon, Tom had no choice to concede that however spurious Kate O’Hara’s claims might have been, it wouldn’t be long before the judge cleaned them out and handed their life savings over to her.
How were they going to survive this? Madeleine wondered as she made her way upstairs to her office. Frankly, she had no idea, but she knew what she could do. In fact, it was something that had been on her mind for a while now. She had been putting it off over the last year in case things miraculously turned in their favor.
Tonight, though, seemed like a fitting time to check this last task off her to-do list.
It was time to delete her website and all of her social media pages.
Mad Mum was dead in the water.
Sitting down at her desk with a heavy heart, Madeleine recounted all the happy times she had spent chronicling her life as a parent, from the early days of Jake’s and Clara’s babyhood to the trials of the toddler years, and now their school-going exploits. It was a montage of sorts, all this detailing of her children’s comings and goings through her eyes, and logging their adventures as a family. She had the sudden thought then that maybe she should just unpublish it, rather than delete everything in its entirety.
After all, weren’t these a big part of her family memories?
No, she thought, no sense in looking back. Already Madeleine knew that going forward, her life, would be divided into two parts: Before the Trial and After the Trial.
And, in truth, it would probably do her sanity some good if she did just delete all of this stuff. She would then also be spared the temptation to go online and read all the angry, judgmental opinions complete strangers seemed so dedicated in making known to her. The hate mail was something that she wouldn’t miss.
Not in the least.
Logging on to her we
bsite, she pulled up the email platform that held all communications coming through the Mad Mum contact form. As expected, there were endless messages from angry people who felt it necessary to offer commentary on her testimony that day. And, as always, her parenting choices.
She didn’t read any of them. Madeleine simply clicked delete as she made her way down the list, emptying the inbox as quickly as she could.
But all of a sudden, one email in particular caught her eye. It had been flagged as of high importance and a little red flag sat next to the sender’s name. The email address didn’t ring any bells, but the subject line was enough to stop her in her tracks: Rosie O’Hara not your fault and I can prove it.
Curious, but wary that this blatantly intriguing subject line was simply another tactic to get her to open the message before cursing her out or worse, Madeleine prepared herself for a verbal—albeit virtual—assault.
Instead, she found a simple message from a City College student called Scott Ferguson.
Furrowing her brow, she felt like her synapses weren’t connecting fast enough. Was it just some medicine student who thought they had something interesting to say about the spread of infectious disease? Or perhaps another one of those flag-waving social-justice warriors so eager to attach themselves to their anti-vaccination stance, considering it a fashionable “cause.” Students seemed to be all over that kind of thing.
But, for some reason, and she truly couldn’t say why, Madeleine was intrigued. And there was no denying that their defense of this case was at rock bottom, so why not? If this kid had something to offer, be it “proof” or otherwise, how was it going to hurt at this stage?
Hitting reply to his email, she wrote, Thanks for your message. Intrigued by subject line. Pressing Send, Madeleine found herself shocked when a message popped back up in her email inbox not ten seconds later. Scott, whoever he was, was obviously online at that very moment.
