Midwives Gaye Demanuele and Melody Bourne charged over mum’s botched home birth death
Caroline Lovell begged for an ambulance during the home birth of her second daughter in Watsonia in 2012. But the midwives allegedly ignored those calls and Mrs Lovell died.
Police & Courts
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Two midwives have been charged over the 2012 botched home-birth death of mother Caroline Lovell.
Gaye Demanuele and Melody Bourne were each charged with negligent manslaughter on Friday following a long-running Victoria Police investigation.
Homicide squad detectives arrested Ms Demanuele, 53, at her Preston home on Friday morning.
New South Wales police subsequently arrested Ms Bourne, 43, at her home in Mullumbimby.
Ms Bourne was expected to face a local court in Byron Bay on Friday afternoon.
Both women will be bailed to appear at the Melbourne Magistrates’ Court on August 21.
Mrs Lovell, 36, died at the Austin Hospital on January 24, 2012, after sustaining massive blood loss following the home birth of her second daughter at her home in Watsonia.
Coroner Peter White in 2016 recommended criminal action be considered against Ms Demanuele after finding gross failures had contributed to the mother’s death.
Mr White said Mrs Lovell begged multiple times for an ambulance to be called to the home, claiming that she was dying.
But Ms Demanuele, who was aided by the less experienced Melody Bourne, didn’t respond to Mrs Lovell’s cries for help.
“I find that Caroline literally begged for ambulance to be called,” Mr White said in 2016.
The coroner found Ms Demanuele failed to assess Mrs Lovell’s medical history, failed to create a safe environment for the delivery and neglected to properly gauge her blood pressure after the delivery.
“I find that this death was preventable. I find that the various acts and omissions described above caused, or substantially contributed to the death of Caroline Lovell.”
Mrs Lovell was left in the birthing pool for more than an hour after delivery, during which time she fell unconscious and had to be lifted out.
Ms Demanuele kept practising as a midwife after Ms Lovell’s tragic and preventable death.
A year earlier both midwives were present at a home birth in which the baby died.
The mother of the stillborn boy claimed in a statement Ms Demanuele had told her she was under investigation in relation to Ms Lovell’s homebirth, as well as two other incidents.
The woman claimed Ms Demanuele repeatedly refused to allow her to go to hospital during the homebirth, despite her feeling increasingly unsafe.
“I told her I was most distressed about having to beg to be taken to hospital during labour and to be met with refusals and lies,” she said.
Mrs Lovell’s mother, Jade Markiewicz, urged public prosecutors to pursue criminal charges against Ms Demanuele following the coroner’s findings in 2016.
“Had the midwives called the ambulance immediately when the problems started, my daughter would still be alive,” Ms Markiewicz said.
“They refused to call an ambulance because of their radical and dangerous beliefs: that women don’t need ambulances, that women don’t need hospitals in childbirth and, because of this belief, my daughter is dead.”
Ms Markiewicz runs a Facebook page called Caroline Lovell Homebirth Reform in which she campaigns for reform to home birth safety practices, standards of care, training and regulation.