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Convicted for the murder of her 4 children, the mother is released, but after 20 years in prison

2023-12-14 17:37:42Kosova&Bota SHKRUAR NGA REDAKSIA VOX
Convicted for the murder of her 4 children, the mother is released, but after 20
Kathleen Folbigg

A woman once dubbed "Australia's worst mother" has had her conviction overturned for murdering her four children. The New South Wales Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that the evidence originally used to jail Kathleen Folbigg was "unreliable".

The 56-year-old woman was released after 20 years in prison. Ms Folbigg welcomed the latest news but said evidence of her innocence had been "ignored and dismissed" for decades.

"The system preferred to blame me rather than accept that sometimes children can die and die suddenly," she said outside court on Thursday.

Ms Folbigg's case has been described as one of Australia's biggest miscarriages of justice.

It concerned the deaths of her four infant children Caleb, Patrick, Sarah and Laura, each of whom died suddenly between 1989 and 1999, aged 19 days to 18 months. Prosecutors at her trial claimed she had strangled them.

The case relied on circumstantial evidence, using Mrs Folbigg's diaries which were never examined by psychologists or psychiatrists to portray her as an unstable, rage-prone mother.

In 2003, she was sentenced to 40 years in prison for the murders of Sarah, Patrick and Laura and the murder of Caleb. It was later reduced to 30 years on appeal, but Ms Folbigg lost a series of legal challenges.

Earlier this year, a landmark inquest into her case concluded there was reasonable doubt of her guilt, due to scientific findings that her children could have died of natural causes due to extremely rare mutations of genes.

And it was that "substantial and extensive body" of new evidence that led to Ms Folbigg's acquittal of all charges on Thursday, Chief Justice Andrew Bell said.

Folbigg's lawyer, Rhanee Rego, said her legal team was preparing a request for "substantial"; compensation for her wrongful imprisonment.

"I'm not prepared to put a figure on it, but it will be bigger than any significant payment that has been made before," Rego said.

The case has attracted global attention and led to accusations that Australia's legal system is slow to respond to advanced science.

"I am grateful that modern science and genetics has given me answers to how my children died. However, even in 1999 we had legal responses to prove my innocence. Prosecutors took my words out of context and turned them against me. I hope no one else ever has to suffer what I suffered,'' Ms Folbigg said.


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