Parents cleared of killing son with methadone, eight years after death

THEY were found responsible for their son's death, had another child subsequently taken from them and were publicly shamed.

But Rochelle Dunlop and her husband John Schreckenberg did not give up there.

Yesterday, after a six-year fight to clear their names, a coroner found they did not give their six-month-old son a lethal dose of methadone.

"Rochelle knew she never gave her baby methadone and I knew in my heart she didn't do it either," Mr Schreckenberg said.

Ms Dunlop put her baby son to bed in her Beverly Hills home on the evening of May 27, 2003, and returned an hour later to find him face down and blue, wedged between a pillow and the right side of his bassinet.

Both parents had been on the methadone program for more than 10 years.

A toxicology test using a blood sample taken on the night showed methadone present and, in 2006, a coroner concluded Ms Dunlop deliberately gave her son the heroin substitute, which was recorded at a level beyond what could have been ingested through breast milk.

Following the inquest, Ms Dunlop was abused by members of the public and attempted to commit suicide.

Her sixth son was taken from her for five months when he was born in 2007 and her children have been subject to drug tests.

In 2010, using "what little money they have", according to their barrister Gaby Bashir, the pair gathered medical reports and literature on methadone levels in neonatal breastfeeding and lodged an appeal for an inquest, which began earlier this month.

A pharmacologist, a pathologist and a specialist in drugs of addiction questioned the veracity of the toxicology test, as it was not corroborated by a second test, used a sample less than the laboratory's reporting limit and had a margin for error that meant it could only be approximate.

New evidence showed the blood sample was taken post-mortem and not ante-mortem.

"All the experts agree that post-mortem there is a redistribution of methadone, which elevates its concentration in the blood of the deceased," Deputy State Coroner Sharon Freund said yesterday.

"I cannot be satisfied … that the admission [to hospital] was as a result of an exogenous dosing of methadone, that is ingestion of methadone by the baby other than by way of breast milk."

The coroner, in rejecting further suggestions he died from positional asphyxiation or SIDS, said there were too many variables. The boy's death will remain a mystery.

"[He] was clearly loved by both his parents who have sought, despite their less than ideal economic circumstances, to have the conclusions … made in the first inquest tested," Magistrate Freund said.

Outside the court, a teary Mr Schreckenberg said they could get their lives back.

"My condolences," Magistrate Freund said to the pair. "And may this be the end of the chapter."

Original report here




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