Kathleen Folbigg left black, bruised in prison bashing

Kathleen Folbigg, the mother convicted of killing four of her children, has revealed she was attacked in jail by a fellow ­inmate.

Kathleen Folbigg appears on a video link screened a the NSW Coroners Court in 2019. Picture: AAP

Kathleen Folbigg, the mother convicted of killing four of her ­infant children, has revealed she was attacked in jail by a fellow ­inmate, a beating that left her with a black eye and bruises, after being transferred to a new prison in northern NSW.

Details of the assault, revealed in a letter Folbigg wrote to a supporter and obtained by The Australian, come as the NSW government considers an extraordinary petition lodged by ­dozens of Australia’s most eminent scientists and medical professionals calling for a pardon for Folbigg.

Folbigg’s letter to her pen friend, a retired nurse, contains remarkable insights into the state of mind and daily life of the woman once dubbed “Australia’s worst serial killer”, but whose guilt is now been questioned in light of new medical evidence.  Always a target in jail because of the “baby killer” tag, Folbigg had nevertheless largely succeeded in gaining the respect of fellow prisoners over the 17 years she has served, many of them in Sydney’s Silverwater.

But just before New Year’s Eve, the 53-year-old was transferred to the Clarence Correctional Centre in Grafton.

“In first 5 days all my forward motion and hard work to be accepted in Main Pop(ulation) in Sydney was destroyed here,” she wrote to her friend. “I was ­assaulted on the 1st. Happy New Year to me. No real damage done. Purple eye, few bruises, all ­because the women didn’t want ‘likes of me’ in their unit.”

While Folbigg brushes off her injuries, her supporters worry for her safety. Her pen friend told The Australian: “I fear for her life while she is imprisoned. She continues to suffer physical, emotional and psychological trauma while she is incarcerated.

“I worry that she minimises all that she’s going through and isn’t getting the help she needs. She needs to be released now.”

The Clarence centre was opened last July and is privately run by contactor Serco. With both minimum- and maximum-security units it will eventually be Australia’s biggest prison, housing 1700 men and women inmates.

But the influx of arrivals to a new prison has created safety ­issues for marked inmates like Folbigg. “Being only six months old and a more relaxed environment, the thugs are testing limits and right now they are winning — driving others into Protection Unit which is where I was ‘forced’ to go,” Folbigg told her pen friend. “Hypocrisy — as most of them have known me for years in ­Silverwater and didn’t behave this way there!

“It will take major cleansing to rid this jail of these ‘types’ and I’m not sure they’ll bother. It does mean that this place isn’t anything that was promised, at least not from (my) point of view.”

Folbigg’s friends in the prison were also threatened with violence if she stayed in the general compound, she said.

“I couldn’t have that — wouldn’t, so back at the beginning I am. It took me over 16 years to obtain some respect from staff and inmates and show them I am nothing like all the reports if you bother to get to know me. Here not even given the opportunity. Very sad.

“But, I’m safe (as can be). So are my friends and that’s all that matters really.”

Folbigg was convicted in 2003 of smothering her four children — Caleb, Patrick, Sarah and Laura — over a 10-year period from 1989 to 1999.

Much of the evidence against her was based on entries in her diary, that the jury was told amounted to confessions of guilt, something she denied. She has ­always maintained her innocence but her conviction has been upheld through several legal challenges.

The NSW Court of Appeal is considering Folbigg’s latest bid to clear her name by overturning the results of a 2019 judicial ­inquiry that found no reasonable doubt as to Folbigg’s convictions.

However, new evidence emerged last year of a mutant gene linked to sudden death in ­babies and carried by two of the Folbigg children that scientists say create “a strong presumption” that they died from natural causes.

“Yes, we’re all hoping even those determined to deny possibilities can no longer,” Folbigg wrote to her pen friend. “It’s all FACT, true, real and printed and published. So how do they even try to deny it … but rest assured they probably will.

“They always fall back on my journals/behaviour. Yet, this time, we’re hoping the truth and facts outweigh all that fantasy/conspiratorial so-called evidence. We have experts that even from my trial have said those journals were never confessional, yet they have been hammered as a weapon and evidence of otherwise. It’s disgraceful — utterly.

“A woman’s confusion, depression, insecurities, fears, doubts, grief being used in such a fashion. I am so fearful of it being done to other women. It’s disgusting!!!”

Folbigg is looking forward to many things when she is eventually released, most of all spending time with Tracey Chapman, the childhood friend who visits her weekly and has been her biggest supporter through the years.

“Spoiling Trace shall be first on my agenda. That woman is stronger than me and has been determination personified, sometimes to her own detriment, health, abuse etc. She’s been my family better than my family.”

In the meantime, for Folbigg, the dangers of the prison’s general compound have been replaced by the monotony of the protection wing.

“Our time is spent having to distract, busy ourselves due to boredom of environment. Some manage it (eg me) others don’t. And it has a neg effect,” she writes.

However, the move to the protection wing appears to have improved her spirits. She works five days a week in the mornings on ground maintenance, an area she describes as “humongous”.

“OMG — I have been severely reminded I’m 54 this year — not 20, 30 or even 40. LOL! Still, hard yakka has never scared me so all good. Better to be active/busy than idle and going nutty.”

NSW Attorney-General Mark Speakman has announced he will consider the scientists’ petition for Folbigg to be granted a pardon, noting that proceedings for a judicial review are currently ­before the Court of Appeal.