Presentazione

da "www.news.com.au"

October 02, 2009

A WOMAN found guilty of murdering her seven-year-old daughter by starving her to death has been sentenced to life in jail by a Sydney court.
Her husband, found guilty of the lesser charge of manslaughter, has been sentenced to a minimum of 12 years in prison by the NSW Supreme Court.

Their autistic daughter, known only as Ebony, was a mere 106cm tall and weighed just nine kilograms when she died in squalid conditions at the family's Hawks Nest home, north of Newcastle, in November 2007.

At the time she died, her face resembled skin stretched over a skull and she reeked of urine and faeces, the court was previously told.

Several doctors testified she suffered from the most severe case of malnutrition they had ever seen.

After a five-week trial and a week of deliberations, the girl's 35-year-old mother was found guilty of her murder and her 48-year-old father was convicted of manslaughter.

Ebony's mother was today jailed for the rest of her life, while the father was sentenced to 12 years non-parole with a maximum of 16 years.

Sentencing the pair, Justice Robert Allan Hulme described Ebony's mother as "cold, callous, cruel and heartless towards her own little girl".

A person seeing Ebony in that state would realise it was not just a probability but a dead-set certainty that she was going to die," he said.

"To my mind, for a person to have done nothing in those circumstances is so morally reprehensible that it could be no more serious if the person actually intended that the child die.

"She witnessed her suffering over an extended period and chose not to lift a finger to help.  I have no doubt that this case is within the worst case category."

With time already served, Ebony's father will be eligible for release on November 16, 2019.

Ebony's real name and the name of her mother and father cannot be published for legal reasons.