Donna Deaves released on parole after watching daughter’s bashing death
A mother who failed to seek immediate medical attention for her two-year-old daughter after watching the toddler be bashed to death walked free from jail earlier today.
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A mother who watched her two-year-old daughter be bashed to death by her partner nine years ago has walked free from jail.
Donna Deaves walked free from Silverwater Prison at 7am on Saturday after serving nine years of her 12 year sentence for failing to do anything to stop Tanilla Warwick-Deaves from dying.
Deaves pleaded guilty to manslaughter on the basis of criminal negligence, after admitting to witnessing her boyfriend Warren Ross assault her daughter on August 25, 2011, at a house in Watanobbi on the Central Coast.
She also admitted to leaving the toddler in her pram for the next 48 hours and failing to seek any medical attention until the early hours of August 27 when she finally called Triple-0.
Tanilla died soon after.
In sentencing Deaves, Justice Stephen Rothman accepted that Deaves felt “helpless’’ but she “should have had the courage to take her child to hospital’’.
He accepted that Deaves never abused the child and had herself been abused by previous partners, contributing to a personality disorder, but said this did not abdicate a mother from her responsibility to protect her child.
Ross is serving a 40-year sentence for Ranilla’s murder.
A Corrective Service spokeswoman confirmed Deaves had been freed but would release no further details to protect her privacy.
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