Melbourne Woman Slits Her Baby Daughter’s Throat Thinking the World Will End, WON'T be Jailed
She made various claims including that her husband was a devil and had bewitched her. The woman also believed that many people would turn into animals, so she had to protect her daughter by killing her.
A schizophrenic Melbourne woman slashed her 13-month-old baby’s throat last year out of fear the world was ending. The unnamed woman was sentenced to a 30-month community corrections order in the Supreme Court of Victoria on Tuesday after pleading guilty to infanticide. The woman will not be jailed and will walk free after completing treatment in a mental health facility, as reported in Daily Mail. The court was told the baby girl died on June 5 last year while woman was during a post-partum episode.
She made various claims including that her husband was a devil and had bewitched her. The woman also believed that many people would turn into animals, so she had to protect her daughter by killing her. During sentencing on Tuesday, Justice Paul Coghlan said the woman ‘suffered from delusional beliefs’ with ongoing schizophrenia and suffering a post-partum depression at the time of the infanticide. He also added that she was under the stress of raising a young family in the context of ‘social economic adversity’.
Previously the woman spent at least six stints as a psychiatric patient in the lead-up to the killing but was discharged 11 days before the death. She had also been reluctant to take her medication in the past. Justice Coghlan agreed to release the woman on a community corrections order given that her medication situation had changed. She was less resistant to taking it and now had an insight into her condition and offending.
(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Jul 31, 2018 04:57 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).