motherhood

It was the OJ Simpson case for the Eighties. The disappearance of little Azaria Chamberlain from a campsite at the foot of Ayers Rock became Australia's most celebrated mystery.

Fifteen years on and it still provokes a perverse fascination, because it still seems so unbelievable that a wild dog could steal a baby without trace, and because of the sneaking and indelible suspicion that somehow the mother was to blame for the disappearance of her baby. We are left with the profoundly disquieting scenario of a mother failing to do what society assumes she will always do, against whatever odds: protect her child.

The facts of the case are scant. Azaria vanishes one night on a family camping holiday. After a frantic torchlit search, Lindy and her husband Michael insist that an Australian wild dog - a "dingo" - snatched their child. The couple make a television appeal. And there the trouble starts. Lindy seems impassive - she is not showing the anguish the public expects. To cap it all, the couple are Seventh Day Adventists: outsiders.

The body is not found. Speculation mounts. Two years on, a circumstantial case is mounted against the parents. Again, Lindy's perceived inability to exhibit the expected degree of public grief wins her little support.

She is eventually found guilty of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. No motive is ever put forward. Baby Azaria is known thereafter as "the dingo baby".

After the chance discovery in 1986 of Azaria's matinee jacket near the spot where she disappeared, Lindy is released. An investigation into whether the couple have suffered from a miscarriage of justice is conducted. In 1988, the convictions are quashed.

The story does not end there. According to the last inquest into the baby's death, Azaria was murdered by "a person or persons unknown". The Chamberlains, now divorced, have been campaigning ever since for this finding to be set aside in favour of a ruling of accidental death after abduction by the dingo.

It is unlikely that even the clearing of their names could ever lay baby Azaria to rest. For our obsession with this tragic case cannot stop there. Whatever the outcome, Lindy and Michael lose. They must accept the unhappy roles of parents who failed to protect their child and, tainted, it is possible that they will always remain suspects in the public's eye.

The idea of a mother who kills her baby is a truly awful one. The giver of life as the taker of the life that she has borne seems the ultimate crime against nature. If we cannot rely on the mother to protect her own, then what can we rely on?

Surely that is why the Virgin Mary is, for many, such a problematic figure: she is presented to us as Every Mother, guardian of us all, yet she had to stand by as her only child was killed. It leaves many feeling deeply uneasy.

But remember A Cry in the Dark, Hollywood's inevitable dramatisation of "the case". Who can forget Meryl Streep's disturbing bobbed wig? Or her cry: "A dingo stole mah bibey!" Or the harrowing court scenes where the grieving mother was urged to cry in court - to appear more feminine.

It is true that at the time Lindy's seemingly impassive acceptance of her baby's death provoked suspicion. If you don't cry, you don't care, they said. Now, by accepting the role of failed parent - one who was unable to guard the one thing society expects her to lay down her life to protect - she risks public admonition a second time. But by doing so, she does us all a service. For surely this is better than the implicit suggestion that, still, a question-mark remains. That, still, she could have done it.