Dingo and Baby

Recent news report from Austrialia that a coroner 32 years after the event rules that in fact the dingo did take the baby.  This is the famous case of Azaria Chamberlain, the baby who in 1980 was reported by her partents to have been snatched away by a dingo, the oldest known member of the dog family.  There was disbelief at the time that a dingo was capable of carring off a baby and the parents were suspected of either killing their child or letting her die from neglect.  The mother was convicted of murder in large part due to her body language after the event.  She did not show the kind of grief expected to have been generated by the loss of her only child.  On object lesson in the importance of non-verbal communication.  It’s not Meryl Streep’s greatest moment in film, but the her representation of the mother in court in the 1988 movie, A Cry in the Dark, demonstrates the problem.

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