She’s Innocent.
We’re Guilty.
By JULIA BAIRD [NYT]
ULURU, the
large red rock in the Australian outback, is a sacred site for aboriginal
people. Photographs do not convey how dramatically it looms: an enormous
crimson heart in the middle of thousands of miles of flat, muted desert.
It was here, on
— dragged a baby called Azaria Chamberlain from a tent as her parents sat by
the campfire. Her body was never found.
Azaria’s desperate mother, Lindy, was accused of lying, convicted
of murder and sent to prison. The film about her, “A Cry in the Dark,” starring
Meryl Streep, spawned a thousand jokes: “A dingo’s got my baby!” It was not
until this week that Lindy and her ex-husband, Michael, were finally given the vindication they
longed for: a death certificate that stated that the cause of Azaria’s death
was a dingo attack.
Why did it take three decades, tens of millions of dollars, a criminal
case appealed in
and four inquests to establish Lindy Chamberlain’s innocence? In that time,
almost 23 million. The case has been a spectacular example of poor forensic
science, anxiety about “evil mothers” and suspicion of religiosity — the
Chamberlains are members of the
infant-slaying cult. Rumors circulated that Azaria meant “sacrifice in the
wilderness” in Hebrew, not “blessed of God.”
Most Australians thought the dingo was a flimsy excuse. Few
people, except park rangers, believed a dingo would attack a baby, and the
evidence indigenous trackers gave about drag marks near the tent was brushed
aside. In a 1984 poll, 76.8 percent of Australians said Lindy Chamberlain was
guilty, and the investigation did little to change their minds.
Then there was Lindy Chamberlain herself. She was thought too
“sexy” and “cold”; she walked into court with a face set like concrete under
large black sunglasses and severely cut black hair. Much was made of her bare,
tanned shoulders, her expansive wardrobe and her stoicism. When she did not
weep on cue, no one suggested she might have been suffering from shock or
trauma. Even worse, she was accused of playing to the cameras that were
constantly thrust in her face. She was, we were told, more interested in
looking pretty than in the death of her child.
This was a woman, as the prosecution put it, who could murder a
baby with nail scissors in the front seat of her car before stuffing the body
into a camera case. When a forensic expert claimed there were bloodstains in
the front of the Chamberlain’s car, those harboring suspicions were triumphant.
Guilty! People spat on her as she walked into the courtroom. It took years
before it emerged that the marks were from a chemical spray and old milk.
When “A Cry in the Dark” was released in 1988, it presented a
significant challenge to public opinion, coming as it did on the heels of a
commission that established serious bungling of evidence by the police and
judiciary and overturned the conviction for which Lindy Chamberlain served
three years. The movie offered a sympathetic portrayal of a woman struck by an
inexplicable tragedy and then accused of an inexplicable crime. By then, she
had already given birth in prison to her fourth child, who lived with foster
parents until her mother was released. Many people wrote her apologetic letters
after seeing the film.
When the coroner tearfully declared the Chamberlains innocent this
week and gave them Azaria’s correct death certificate, there was a surprising
display of grief and shame in
using Lindy Chamberlain as a punch line; TV hosts were grave and emotional.
Azaria would have turned 32 on June 11; her parents’ faces crumpled when
reminded of it.
The Australian historian Michelle Arrow, who has co-edited a book
about the case, believes it was such an engrossing spectacle that we still bear
a “psychic scar” from it. Part of the witch hunt, certainly, was about the way
white Europeans viewed aboriginal land; as a remote place where sinister things
would happen, a place of dark magic where a young mother would slit her baby’s
throat as a sacrifice to God.
We see now that our willingness to believe that was a collective
failure of empathy. We assumed an innocent woman was guilty. We threw rocks at
a grieving mother. And a nation founded by convicts somehow forgot the
presumption of innocence.
Lindy Chamberlain is writing a book on forgiveness now. She has
learned how to absolve those who mocked, vilified and condemned her. We should
take longer to forgive ourselves.
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