A Family Destroyed home Sally Clark's ordeal must never happen again. The Times  June 7th, 2004 Her release from jail was not the end of the nightmare for Sally Clark. As she and her husband demonstrate in The Times today, the quashing, 18 months ago, of her conviction for killing two of her children was just another step in a relentless process which began with the death of their first son seven and a half years ago, and threatens to turn into a life sentence for Mrs Clark. With utter dignity, Steve Clark tells a tale that is almost too sad for words.  Mrs Clark has no words left. This woman who clung on to her sanity, ignored her pain, stayed strong through the deaths of two children, her trial for their murder, her separation from a third child at birth and more than three years in jail, found upon her release from prison that "things began to go so badly wrong inside me". Too ill to speak publicly, her tale has been told through a friend, a lawyer whose faith in the justice system, like that of the Clarks, has been shattered by what he witnessed. The Clarks want to tell their story so that their surviving son has an accurate record of what occurred, and to try to prevent a repetition of such a gross miscarriage of justice.  Sympathy is easy; anger, fine; meaningful reform, harder. The tales of Mrs Clark, and of Angela Cannings, Trupti Patel and other women accused of murdering their children, have shocked the nation. The flashbulbs popping over the heads of these women cast into shadow an unpalatable truth: that there are mothers who kill their babies. Of the 350 babies who suffer "cot death" each year, on best evidence, around 30 will have died at the hands of their parents. The Attorney-General has ordered a review of 298 cases where women have been convicted of killing infants in the past ten years. Of the 97 reviewed so far, just five have been recommended to appeal. The other 92 convictions are considered sound.  Just one case like Mrs Clark's is too many. It is a story of a couple fighting an unstoppable "process", from the police to social services to the criminal and family courts, to the final indignity of a dispute with the Government over appeal costs. There is no minister with responsibility for such cases. The Children's Minister, Margaret Hodge, has asked social services departments to review hundreds of non-criminal cases where children have been taken into care on the disputed evidence of expert witnesses. The Attorney-General has ordered a review of criminal convictions. The pathologists have commissioned an inquiry into pathologists. The General Medical Council and the Bar Council have shrugged off criticism of barristers and doctors.  Mr Clark has a simple reform to propose: that every suspicious death of an infant be examined not by a general Home Office pathologist, but by a specialist paediatric pathologist. This would have prevented the miscarriage of justice in the case of his wife; the pathologist misdiagnosed the cause of death of their second baby, and then changed his findings about the death of the first. The Home Office says there are no plans to change the rules.  Ministers should take a cold, sober look at a system that bestows such authority on so many, while conferring responsibility on nobody; in which such terrible mistakes can be made and, once made, be so dauntingly difficult and sometimes impossible to put right.  "Sally still isn't well and she never will be well again," her husband says flatly. "She was strong for all those years in prison . . . Her fuel tank is exhausted." Only when the Clarks know that somebody is prepared to take responsibility for what happened, and to ensure that it never happens to another family, might there be a chance that they will feel they have begun to achieve justice.