Laura Rose Peverill to be sentenced for manslaughter of daughter Rylee-Rose Black
Rylee-Rose’s dad has revealed the heartbreaking toll the little girl’s death has taken on her family as a judge sentences her mother to jail.
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Three-year-old Rylee-Rose Peverill was locked in the back seat of a 4WD vehicle in temperatures estimated to be more than 50 degrees C for five hours and eight minutes, the Supreme Court was told on Friday.
The court was told simply that such conditions were not survivable.
Appearing before the court for sentencing was Laura Rose Peverill, 39, who pleaded guilty to one count of the manslaughter of Rylee-Rose, who was found unresponsive in the back of the Toyota Prado at her Burdell home on November 27, 2020.
Before a court full of family members of both Peverill and Rylee’s father, Peter Black, Crown Prosecutor David Nardone told the court that Rylee had been in the third-row seat of the Prado while Peverill and her boyfriend at the time picked up groceries, parked the Prado in a shadeless driveway, and removed the groceries, but not Rylee.
He said the outside temperature at the time was 30.9 degrees.
“For the next five hours, they did not leave the home, but watched a Netflix series ironically called ‘Shameless’,” he said.
He told the court that during that time the outside temperature varied between 30 and 31.4 degrees.
The court heard that two days later with similar outside temperatures of between 29.4 and 31.1 degrees, experts tested the interior temperature of the Prado and found that it reached up to 51.5 degrees, which Mr Nardone said was not survivable.
He said Rylee would have suffered heart stress, intense thirst, discomfort, anxiety and headaches, leading to delirium, convulsions and death.
He said there was evidence of vomit found inside the Prado and it wasn’t until 2.38pm, when Peverill got back in the vehicle to pick up older children from school, that she discovered Rylee slumped in her restraint in the seat.
He said they rushed her to hospital where she died of heat stroke or thermoregulartory failure, with a body temperature of 41 degrees.
Mr Nardone said Peverill was interviewed by police the same day and ‘acknowledged her failings’.
Rylee’s father Peter Black read a lengthy victim impact statement from the witness box with his partner Cassandra Glendinning sitting next to him supporting him.
He said, in a voice trembling with emotion, that when he received the call about Rylee from the hospital, his ‘world was torn apart’ and he lost a piece of himself.
“The world stopped turning … my happy, bubbly princess was gone forever … could it be real, it made no sense,” he said.
He said when he reached the hospital himself there were multiple police and nurses crying and they would not let him see Rylee, as she was ‘in no state to be seen’.
He told of the anguish of telling his other children about Rylee’s death and how their screams and crying haunt him forever.
Mr Black spoke of the day of his daughter’s funeral where he viewed her body and sang, ‘Twinkle, twinkle little star’ to her.
“I apologised to her for not being able to save her and I would have moved mountains if I had been there,” he said.
Mr Nardone then read out victim impact statements from other Black family members who spoke of a bright, bubbly child that was energetic and cheeky – ‘the source of light and love, who lives on within us all’.
Defence barrister Victoria Trafford-Walker told the court how Peverill has suffered mental health issues for many years, plus dealing with alcohol issues as well.
She said Peverill was in a stress situation on the day of Rylee’s death, dealing with removalists, as she was moving in to live with her boyfriend.
Ms Trafford-Walker said Peverill had seen a range of psychiatrists, psychologists and counsellors in recent years in an effort to deal with her mental health and alcohol issues.
She said Peverill utterly recognised her role in the tragedy and had no intention to harm Rylee in any way.
“It has had a profound and everlasting impact on her life. She has lost her partnership with her then boyfriend, and now even feels she deserves to go to prison,” she said.
“Although she is fearful of what might occur because of the nature of the offence.”
Ms Trafford-Walker described the avalanche of extreme hate material that Peverill had received via social media, that included death threats and suggestions that she commit suicide.
“About 600 people have tried to add her to their Facebook pages and she doesn’t know them, or for what reason.”
Justice David North said it had been serious offending by Peverill by way of omission and unlawful killing by way of manslaughter.
He said the maximum penalty for the unlawful killing of a child was life imprisonment and that he had to take the defencelessness and vulnerability of what had occurred into account.
He said he had no doubt Peverill had expressed remorse and was experiencing grief for her actions, and that he accepted the remorse was genuine.
Justice North sentenced Peverill to seven years’ jail, with a parole eligibility date of July 3, 2025.
He said she may be at some risk in prison and that he recommended she serve her time in protective custody.
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Originally published as Laura Rose Peverill to be sentenced for manslaughter of daughter Rylee-Rose Black
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