Harrowing Story of Convicted Chilminder
Posted by News Editor
Wednesday, January 23, 2008

For those who missed it there is disturbing story of  Keran Henderson's conviction of  the manslaughter of a little girls she was childminding, in Daily Mail on the 20th January.

Keran and Iain Henderson were the ideal couple: he was a police officer and she a mother who loved children so much that she looked after them for a living.

But, in a case that has terrible echoes of previous miscarriages of justice, Keran suddenly found herself accused of manslaughter, and the family's nightmare began...

Shortly after 8am, I answered a knock on the door of our Buckinghamshire home. Two police officers flashed their badges and asked to come in.

Our eldest son, Cameron, then 11, had already left for school but our youngest, Jamie, 6, was still home and I told him to stay upstairs. The officers said they were arresting my wife, Keran, for assault and manslaughter.

Stunned, she sat down on the edge of a chair and held her hands in her lap. She had never even had a speeding ticket before. I was incensed at the shock tactic. Dawn raids are for terrorists, gangsters, hardened criminals.

I had conducted countless arrests as a police officer in London and I knew they didn't need to arrest my wife, they could have just asked her to come to the station at Maidenhead. She had co-operated with them in every way before.

"Where is your evidence? What is your case?" I demanded as they took Keran away.

She was trying to calm me down. She said she wanted to find out what had happened to Maeve, the 11-month-old baby who died after being in her care. She wanted to clear it all up and she still had faith in the system.

Keran left our home in Iver Heath and was taken to Maidenhead police station where, shaking and crying, she was made to take off her clothes and given a sweatshirt and jogging trousers to wear. They asked her the same questions they had asked twice before. The police had no new evidence, they were just trying to make her crack.

Keran told them what she had always maintained. She hadn't shaken or assaulted Maeve, as the prosecution later claimed. Maeve had some kind of fit or seizure.

When people are lying, their story changes because they can't remember all the lies they have told. Keran gave the same account right from the start, and she told it consistently for two-and-a-half years. But nothing she could say or do could dissuade them from prosecuting her for manslaughter.

Last November, two years after her arrest, she was found guilty and sentenced to three years in prison (more)