Mum denies placing boy in washing machine
By Rebecca Le May, AAP Updated June 21, 2013, 7:08 pm
Mother Kerry Murphy admits she struggled to cope with her son Sean's energy. The toddler died in a closed washing machine. Picture from Channel 9.
A Perth mother has denied putting her son in a washing machine - where he was found dead.
The mother of a young boy who died from being trapped in a washing machine has told a Perth court she did not place him in there and was fast asleep when he climbed in himself.
Kerry Murphy, 27, gave her evidence on the final day of a coronial inquiry into the death of Sean Murphy, 3, who was found in the front-loader machine with his dead pet cat on September 20, 2010.
She claimed she had overslept into the early afternoon and Sean - for the first time since he had become mobile - had not jumped on her to wake her in the morning.
Ms Murphy, who was diagnosed as having a borderline personality disorder when she was 18, suggested spring-time asthma and allergies had made her drowsy, and said she was a heavy sleeper.
She was woken by a phone call, she claimed, and noticed the public housing property was quiet, so began frantically searching for her son.
Ms Murphy found Sean "in a foetal position", pressed against the rear of the washing machine, and she had to remove the stiff body of the dead cat first before she could get to her son.
She attempted CPR and called 000.
When paramedics arrived, a hysterical Ms Murphy said: "I've killed my baby."
She said that because she feared he'd been injured during her resuscitation attempts and because she blamed herself for what happened, Ms Murphy told the court.
"If I'd been awake, he wouldn't have climbed in there," she said.
While the washing machine door had been closed after the last load, Sean could have opened it himself and climbed in, she said.
"I could have used one finger to open that door."
The inquest was shown a photo of the boy some six months earlier, playing "hide and seek" in a dryer that was missing its door.
Ms Murphy said she should have explained to her son - who climbed on anything that was "climbable" - that hiding there was dangerous.
The inquest heard earlier this week from a neighbour - who admitted he had a falling out with the boy's mother - that he heard yelling, stomping and muffled cries coming from the house hours before Sean died.
Coroner Alastair Hope said there were three possible scenarios that he would consider: the family dog had jumped up and closed the washing machine door shut after the boy had climbed in, Sean had trapped himself inside the machine - pushing the door from the inside so it rebounded and closed - or the mother was involved.
But he had difficulty envisioning how Sean physically could have entered the machine to have wound up in the position in which he was found, and how he could have caused the door to rebound shut given that position.
"These are the practical aspects that are troubling me the most," Mr Hope said.
He will hand down his findings on July 19.
