- Nov 8, 2016
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If that Adelaide woman had just driven to Victoria and managed to kill the baby or leave it severely disabled she would have had the privilege of getting no jail time AND having her identity hidden to not have any public judgement following her.
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/la...l/news-story/415ec0a11d0f39bc35226a0cfdc8f298
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/la...l/news-story/415ec0a11d0f39bc35226a0cfdc8f298
Incredibly sad story.A MUM who killed one of her twin baby girls and left the other severely disabled will not spend any time in jail.
The woman, 39, pleaded guilty to infanticide over the death of her eight-week-old daughter and recklessly causing serious injury to the baby’s sister.
Infanticide applies for mothers suffering a mental disturbance caused by childbirth, and carries a maximum jail term of five years.
She can’t be named, despite the father of the babies urging the court to lift a suppression order on her identity.
The father said he wanted the order lifted so he could talk openly about his lost daughter, who had “just disappeared”.
He also wants to raise much-needed funds for the surviving twin, he told the court in a statement.
But the Supreme Court heard that identifying the woman would not be in the best interests of her surviving children.
Justice Bernard Bongiorno refused to lift the ban on publishing the names or pictures of the woman and the twins.
The twins’ father, who was not present at two previous court hearings because he was at hospital appointments with his daughter, cried as the mother was sentenced to a community corrections order for one year.
Outside court, the twins’ paternal uncle — wearing a doubled-over pink lapel ribbon — said the sentence was “manifestly inadequate”.
The father had asked the judge to “please hand down justice for my daughters,” in a moving victim impact statement read to the court.
He said he was now acting as both mother and father to the couple’s older child and surviving daughter, who could not walk or talk as a result of permanent brain damage suffered at the hands of her mother.
The court heard the surviving children — the twin girl and a boy aged four — lived with their father, but their mother was still a legal guardian.
Justice Bongiorno said the father was awoken by noises made by his distressed, pale and limp baby girl, who stopped breathing, in the early hours of April 26, 2012.
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