this post was submitted on 14 Dec 2023
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109
Australian woman jailed for 20 years for death of her four children has conviction quashed (www.reuters.com)
submitted 11 months ago by girlfreddy@lemmy.ca to c/news@lemmy.world
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Kathleen Folbigg was convicted in 2003 of murdering three of her children, and of manslaughter in the death of her fourth. Folbigg maintained her innocence and said the children had died of natural causes over a decade, from 1989-1999.

In 2019, an initial inquiry into the case reaffirmed Folbigg's guilt. But in 2022, a second inquiry led by a former chief justice found new evidence suggested two of the children had a genetic mutation that may have caused their deaths.

Folbigg was released from prison in June this year after being pardoned.

"I am grateful that updated science and genetics has given me answers as to how my children died," an emotional Folbigg told reporters outside a criminal appeals court in Sydney.

"However, even in 1999, we had legal answers to prove my innocence. They were ignored. And dismissed," she said. "The system preferred to blame me rather than accept that sometimes, children can and do die suddenly, unexpectedly, and heartbreakingly."

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[–] SomeoneElse@lemmy.ca 16 points 11 months ago

I hadn’t heard of this case but I googled the diary entries and at first pass they do seem very damming - no unlike Lucy lettsby’s notes. But the testimony from multiple experts is pretty clear that they are not confessions but the tangled thoughts of someone suffering from multiple child bereavements. Of course she wasn’t in her right mind, but that doesn’t mean she killed them.

Joanna Garstang, a consultant community paediatrician and designated doctor on a child death review panel in Birmingham, reviewed Folbigg’s diaries and submitted an expert witness report to the inquiry, released publicly on Tuesday.

“Much of my clinical work involves the investigation of unexpected child deaths, regularly working alongside police,” Garstang wrote. “In my opinion, the expressions of self-blame and guilt in Ms Folbigg’s diary fit with those described in the literature or that I have witnessed in my clinical and research practice. I do not consider them true confessions of guilt.”

Garstang said each of those comments was an “expression of self-blame in keeping with published literature” about bereaved parents. “Ms Folbigg is blaming herself for the deaths, she may be considering that her stress caused the deaths. This is in keeping with published literature and not of concern.”

Counsel assisting the inquiry, Sophie Callan, SC, foreshadowed last week that two psychiatrists and a psychologist would also give evidence this week about Folbigg’s diaries, none of whom was expected to say the diaries contained expressions of criminal guilt.