Ex-midwife Lisa Barrett did nothing illegal during homebirths, Supreme Court hears

Ex-midwife Lisa Barrett has denied responsibility for the deaths of two babies, arguing their mothers’ decision to choose a homebirth “led to both of them losing their babies”.

Ex-midwife Lisa Barrett is standing trial in the Supreme Court.

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Ex-midwife Lisa Barrett has denied responsibility for the deaths of two babies, arguing their mothers’ decision to choose a homebirth “led to both of them losing their babies”, a court has heard.

Almost seven weeks after the trial started, Scott Henchliffe SC, for Barrett, began delivering closing submissions in defence of his client on Tuesday.

“There was no law that made anything that Barrett did, that we have heard about in this case, illegal,” he said.

Barrett, 52, of Petwood in the Adelaide Hills is standing trial in the Supreme Court after pleading not guilty to two counts of manslaughter over the deaths of twin Tully Kavanagh, and another unnamed baby in 2011 and 2012. Barrett had been hired to provide antenatal and labour assistance for both women.

She was no longer a registered midwife at the time and called herself a birth advocate. Laws have since been introduced in South Australia banning anyone other than a registered medical practitioner or midwife from assisting a labour or birth.

Mr Henchliffe said the two mother’s whose babies died had “self-serving” memories of their pregnancies and births and “both hold Barrett responsible in some way for the outcome”.

“The decision to homebirth was their own and in the most general sense it was that decision which, when the risks eventuated, led to both them losing their babies,” he said.

“It’s only human nature for them to seek to put themselves in the light where they carry less guilt or blame or responsibility for what ultimately occurred.”

Mr Henchliffe said that while other courts had a different view “Barrett did not owe a duty of care to the deceased whilst they were unborn, and, therefore only acts and omissions after the birth could establish liability and negligence”.

He said the direct causes of either baby’s death “were not acts of the accused, or for that matter omissions”.

Opening the trial in March, prosecutor Sandi McDonald SC, had said Barrett had failed to tell either mother of “the true dangers they were facing” and had deliberately “downplayed the risks”.

She said Barrett was criminally negligent because she failed to properly advise the women of the risks prior to birth or the urgent need to transfer to hospital when further problems were encountered during their labours.

She said the two babies had “died as a direct result of the manner in which they were born at home and Barrett’s gross negligence meant neither baby was alive today”.

During Tully’s birth, she said Barrett was “calm, composed and almost casual in her approach” and had gone outside to smoke a cigarette as she called the hospital to advise Ms Kerr would be brought in.

Mr Henchliffe will continue his closing submissions, before Justice Ann Vanstone in the absence of a jury, on Wednesday.