Victoria Spencer's pain after babies die in care home
A home for abused and HIV positive children in Cape Town is the subject of a major police investigation following the unexplained deaths of two babies.
Victoria Spencer Meets Orphans Evacuated From Care Home In Cape Town Photo: Michelly Rall/Getty Images
By Aislinn Laing, Johannesburg
9:29PM BST 03 Jun 2011
On Friday, Victoria Spencer, the former wife of Lady Diana's brother Earl Spencer, helped the home's managers hand over their remaining nine babies and toddlers to social services.
Staff at the Building Blocks Children's Home found two girls, Lee-Ann Simons and Sasha-Lee James, who were both aged two months and sharing a cot, dead minutes apart on Tuesday morning.
A preliminary post-mortem report suggested one child died of natural causes, but pathologists are still waiting for a second autopsy and more conclusive results from blood tests.
A distraught Mrs Spencer was seen helping to transfer the children with her friend Jenny Berger, who co-founded the home. Mrs Berger said one of the girls had been abandoned and the other was born to a heroin addict.
"We did nothing different. They had their feed and bath in the morning, and then were placed in the cot to sleep. They were smiling and gurgling, had their bottles and were each wrapped in a blanket," she told the Cape Argus newspaper.
She said when she herself discovered the babies: "I can't describe what it felt like. The children become like my own and I can't begin to tell you what I felt and how I'm feeling now. How can you explain a cot death?"
Ashley Theron, from Child Welfare South Africa, said deaths at any institution must be thoroughly investigated.
"We can never accept the death of any child... especially if that child is at a place of safety or a children's home, we get very worried," he said.
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