Mother avoids prison sentence
Updated: 18:21, Friday March 28, 2014
No punishment can be more severe for a mother who killed one baby daughter and badly injured the other than the tragedy itself, a judge says.
The Victorian woman had faced up to 20 years' jail after killing the eight-week-old and seriously injuring her twin but on Friday avoided a prison sentence.
She will instead serve a community corrections order for one year.
A relative says the sentence is manifestly inadequate and the girls' lives should be worth more.
Victorian Supreme Court Justice Bernard Bongiorno said the woman was emotionally and psychologically compromised when she shook and slapped her eight-week-old daughters in 2012.
'No court could ever inflict a punishment more severe than that which this tragedy has imposed upon her and will continue to impose upon her for many years, perhaps forever,' Justice Bongiorno said on Friday.
He said it was clear the woman was a loving mother.
The baby girl died in hospital after her father discovered she was unresponsive and was having trouble breathing.
The parents had been caring for the babies in shifts, with one sleeping on the nursery floor, after the girls contracted colic.
They had been difficult babies and their mother often felt 'down' because she was unable to provide them with comfort, the court heard.
A post-mortem found the injuries to the baby girl's brain, body and ribs were not all inflicted at the same time and were not accidental.
When a nurse had earlier questioned the mother about bruising on the babies, she had been unable to give an explanation.
'I don't know what they are doing, they may be bashing each other or bashing themselves,' the woman responded, the nurse said.
But after an exhaustive police interview in which she spoke of going into a daze, the mother was charged.
From the 1200-question police interview a picture emerged of a 'distraught, frightened and possibly mentally ill woman'.
Psychologists said her actions would sustain only a charge of infanticide - an offence which applies when a mother kills her infant within two years of birth and the balance of her mind is disturbed.
The woman, who cannot be identified, pleaded guilty to infanticide and one count of recklessly causing serious injury.
As the sentence was read, the defendant and the girls' father both cried openly.
A relative of the family said the crime had affected many, many people and ruined many lives.
'The lives were worth more than a one year community corrections order,' the relative said outside court.
