Mother who has admitted killing her baby spared jail

Judge calls for compassion in case of postnatal depression

- TARA COBHAM

A mother who suffocated her newborn baby and dumped his body in a bin bag in woodland in a secret she kept for 25 years has avoided jail.

A judge has called for “compassion” for Joanne Sharkey, who pleaded guilty to manslaughter by diminished responsibility over the death of the baby boy, named Callum by police investigating his death in 1998.

His body was found by a dog walker close to Gulliver’s World theme park in Warrington, Cheshire, on 14 March 1998. The 55year-old, aged 28 at the time of her newborn’s death, was only traced more than two decades later, through DNA checks after the arrest of her other son.

She was initially arrested for murder but later admitted she killed the baby while suffering from postnatal depression after the birth of her first son in 1996.

A court heard Sharkey kept her pregnancy a secret, even from her husband, and when the baby was born in the bathroom of her house in Croxteth, Liverpool, she heard him starting to make a noise and covered his nose and mouth “to make him quiet”.

The mother described her arrest in 2023 as a “relief”, telling detectives: “It’s not easy to live with all that time. I thought this would happen, you don’t get away with anything forever.”

Yesterday, Sharkey sat shaking with emotion and wiping away tears as she was given a two-year suspended prison sentence at Liverpool Crown Court. The defendant’s family in the public gallery broke down in tears and exchanged hugs.

Passing sentence, Mrs Justice Eady told Sharkey she accepted her mental state at the time had “substantially impaired your ability to form rational judgments” and since then had been “haunted” by what she had done.