The most pertinent question that Little Disasters asked was if Jess could have potentially hurt her 10-month-old girl, Betsy. Jess had told her friend, Liz, who was a doctor in the pediatric department of Thames Bank Hospital, that Betsy had fallen accidentally, because of which she had gotten hurt. But when Liz found out that Betsy’s skull had been fractured, she realized that Jess was not telling the entire truth. Liz informed Social Services about the case, and Jess felt extremely betrayed by her friend’s actions. Liz had known Jess for over a decade, but still, she didn’t give her any benefit of the doubt. Apart from what had happened to Betsy, Jess was going through a very tough phase in her life. She was suffering from some mental health issues that she hadn’t told anybody about. So, let’s figure out what the law enforcement authorities found out about the case and if Jess had actually physically assaulted her daughter.
Spoiler Alert
What Happened During Jess’ Interrogation?
DC Steve Rustin and DC Farron, the officers who were in charge of the investigation, were quite sure that Jess had lost control of herself and hurt her baby. Steve believed that Jess and Ed were not bad parents, but things had become complicated after they had their third child. Steve was right in making that assumption, because the third pregnancy had taken a huge toll on Jess (which I’ll address in detail later).
Apart from the evidence that the officers gathered against Jess, there were many other things that made it seem like she had actually assaulted her daughter. When Lucy Harding from Social Services and Steve Rustin had asked Jess about the events that took place on Friday, i.e., the day Betsy’s skull was fractured, she wasn’t able to recall the exact details. Jess looked confused, and it did appear she was hiding certain things on purpose. Another weird thing that happened was that Mel, who was a family friend who had volunteered to be with the Carrisford family as an official overseer, noticed that Jess had kept all the knives inside a cupboard. She didn’t understand why her electric kettle or the knives were not in the kitchen area. Moreover, the moment Mel took out a knife, Jess and Ed’s kids, Frankie and Kit, left the room, stating that their mother had told them to leave the room whenever anybody used a knife. Mel didn’t know what to think of it, but she realized that Jess, for some unknown reason, was not doing well mentally. The most shattering thing for a person is when their spouse, someone with whom they have imagined their entire life, loses trust in them. Ed had no faith in Jess. He knew that she was a good mother, but of late, she had been acting very impulsively. To make matters worse, Jess tried running away from the hospital with Betsy, as she feared that the doctors wouldn’t take good care of her. Jess’ paranoia was becoming more evident every passing day, and people weren’t wrong in perceiving her as a threat to her baby.
Andrew, Charlotte’s husband and a family friend of the Carrisfords, came on board to represent Jess as her legal counsel. Andrew was a good lawyer, but even he couldn’t do anything when Steve and DC Farron showed Jess the CCTV footage of a medical store from the same day when Betsy was hurt. According to Jess’ testimony, she hadn’t left the house that day, but CCTV footage showed that she had gone to buy medicine from a local store. She had left her kids alone in the house for almost half an hour. The timeline of the events was such that it was impossible for anybody to believe that she wasn’t the one who had hurt her daughter. Betsy suffered injuries around that same time, and Jess was seen in a pharmacy after that. The detectives were quick to connect the dots and draw their own conclusions. The police officers charged Jess with child abduction and child endangerment for running away from the hospital with Betsy. As far as hurting her child was concerned, they couldn’t substantiate their doubts with incriminating evidence, though they were quite sure that it was Jess who was behind it.
Did Jess Actually Hurt Betsy?
I won’t deny that there was a time in Little Disasters when I thought that Ed was physically abusing his wife, and he was the one who had hurt the baby. He had come back home drunk that night, and I thought that maybe he had done something he shouldn’t have done. But it was not so. From the very beginning, Frankie, Ed and Jess’ younger son, was behaving in a manner that made it quite clear that the boy was not doing well mentally. There was something that was bothering the little kid, and he was just not able to talk about it to his parents. Somewhere, it felt like Frankie blamed himself for what had happened to his mother and sister. He blamed himself for Jess being interrogated and the whole family falling apart. He went into a cocoon, and he stopped interacting with anybody. Social Services still hadn’t shut the case, so Jess was allowed to meet her kids only for a couple of days in the entire week. Betsy was discharged from the hospital, and it seemed that, slowly, things were falling into place, though Ed was still not sure if his wife was innocent.
One day, Jess was meeting her kids, and after a long time, the family was spending some quality time with their friends. Charlotte, Liz, Andrew, and everybody else were having some much-needed downtime together with the Carrisfords when Mel and her husband, Rob, suddenly walked in, and something strange happened after that. Frankie got scared when he saw Rob, and he ran away and hid in the bushes. Ed and Jess didn’t understand what happened to him suddenly. The boy was shivering in fear when Jess finally found him. She tried to calm him down when something unprecedented happened. Rob took Betsy in his arms, and the moment Frankie saw him doing that, he started shouting at him to leave his sister alone. Frankie told his parents in a shivering voice that it was Rob who had hurt Betsy. When Jess had gone to buy medicine, Rob had arrived at their place unannounced. Rob wanted Ed to invest in his business, and the latter was not willing to do that. Rob had started his own music label, but he was on the verge of going bankrupt as he hadn’t been able to sign a single artist in the entire year. He had to sell his house at the end and move out of London to cover his debts.
Rob, as stated by Mel, was a vile, self-serving bully who just wanted to have his way. He had come to have a word with Ed, I presume, but Frankie asked him to help him change Betsy’s diapers. Rob kept Betsy on the edge of a kitchen counter and got busy probably to forge some financial details of Ed, when suddenly she accidentally fell from the table and banged her head on the floor. Instead of taking her to the hospital, like a coward, Rob threatened Frankie to not tell anybody about what had happened and blamed him for being irresponsible. Rob told Frankie that his mother would go to prison if he told anybody about what had happened. He brainwashed the kid into believing that it was all his fault. The kid got so scared that he just didn’t speak about it for days. Rob didn’t know how to defend himself once Frankie told everybody about what had happened. Had it been up to Ed, he would have taught the man a lesson then and there. But Andrew, Nick, and others stopped him from doing so. Liz immediately informed Social Services and the police about what had happened, after which Rob was taken into custody. Poor Mel stood there feeling disgusted at her own choices. She couldn’t imagine how she could have fallen in love with such a guy. The man didn’t care about what she wanted; he belittled her without even thinking about the impact it would have on her, and he blamed her for his own shortcomings. Rob didn’t let Mel work at the beginning of their relationship, as he wanted her to stay at home and look after the kids. But when Mel argued with him about not leaving London, he was quick to tell her that, without him, she amounted to nothing. He told her that if she didn’t do what he told her to, he would make sure she never saw her kids. Mel had always given in in the past, but that day, after she heard what Rob had done to Betsy, she decided to take a stand against him. A disgruntled Rob sat in police custody, and I do not think that the man, till the very end, felt any sort of guilt about what he had done.
Did Jess And Ed Reconcile?
In Little Disasters’ ending, it did become clear that Jess had not hurt her daughter, but that didn’t mean that she wasn’t suffering from mental health issues. Jess had never wanted a third child, as the first two had probably taken quite a toll on her physically and mentally. She gave in because she knew how much Ed wanted it. Ed never realized what she was going through, and though he was a good father and husband, that was one big misjudgment on his part. Ed was busy with his life, and he left Jess all by herself. She felt alone, and there were times when she couldn’t handle everything on her own. Just a little support from Ed would have made things much easier for both of them. Betsy was born, and Jess started having these intrusive thoughts that she just couldn’t control. According to Liz’s research, Jess suffered from postnatal anxiety, where she had these visions in which she was hurting her daughter. She had even searched on the internet why she was having these visions in which she was killing her baby. Jess was aware of what she was feeling, which was why Mel found the knives stashed in her cupboard and not out in the open. Also, Jess’ mistrust of the medical system became a problem for her. People saw her as a paranoid woman who lived in her own bubble. But I believe in the end, Ed and Jess did prove their love for each other. Charlotte and Ed’s growing closeness and affection made me feel like they would cheat on Jess. Charlotte made it pretty clear to Ed that she had been attracted to him since their college days and that she wanted something more than friendship from him. But Ed truly loved Jess with all his heart. Things were not going well between them, but that didn’t mean that he had any intention of abandoning her. Everything Ed did was for the safety and well-being of his kids. After the truth came out in the open, Ed apologized to Jess for not trusting her. Their wounds were deep; they had endured a lot of trauma, but I think with time, they will grow closer, and their bond will become stronger.
