The facts state the child was “afraid” and “grabbed hold of the bus shelter, wrapping both arms around the seat” as the woman pulled her left arm with both hands.
“[The girl] was screaming … saying, “Nanny, stop her, stop her.”
The grandmother was poked in the eye as she tried to break the offender’s hold on the girl, who tried to kick as she was held.
“She’s coming with me, I’m going to take her, she’s mine,” the offender said.
The grandmother managed to break the woman’s grip on her granddaughter before the offender “walked away, holding up her fists”. Police found the woman at the bus stop later that day with a bag of children’s toys in her possession.
The woman became agitated, resisting officers as she was put in the police vehicle, and “appeared to be highly intoxicated”. She was taken to Bankstown Hospital, where she remained for a month and was charged upon her release.
Baby’s tragic bath death
In 2003, the woman killed her baby daughter by lowering her into a plastic bath filled with hot water, causing “extreme” redness and loss of skin, according to the sentencing judgment. The child suffered burns to 75 per cent of her body.
A neighbour told police the baby’s screaming was “very loud, continuous screeching and crying”.
The woman and her de facto partner argued about what happened, but neither called for help. The woman dried her baby with a towel, rubbed her with cream and shampoo, put her in a pram and left the unit in the middle of the night.
In the following hours, she tried to get drugs and offered to perform a sex act on a passing driver. At 3.30am, police responded to a call that a woman was “acting suspiciously” and found the mother and child on the street.
The baby girl was under a blanket in the pram and her skin was “very cold”. She was taken to hospital but pronounced dead.
The woman told police she had given her daughter a bath and she “got red dye all over her”.
“I tried to wash it off, but it wouldn’t come off,” she said.
She was told her daughter had died and replied, “She isn’t dead. I can’t believe she is dead” and “Do you think we can bring her back?”
The woman was sentenced in 2005 for manslaughter on the basis of gross criminal negligence. Justice Megan Latham said the mother’s duty of care fell “so far short of acceptable standards of care that it is properly characterised as wicked and deserving of punishment”, and that the woman’s judgment had been “significant impaired”, but not to the degree to establish a defence of diminished responsibility.
The woman was released on parole in 2008 but has been in custody since the attempted kidnapping in 2022.
If you or anyone you know needs help, call Lifeline on 13 11 14 (and see lifeline.org.au), 1800 RESPECT (1800 737 732), the National Sexual Abuse and Redress Support Service on 1800 211 028 or Kids Helpline on 1800 551 800.
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