By Sarah McPhee
Warning: Graphic content
A woman who tried to kidnap a nine-year-old girl waiting at a Sydney bus stop with her grandmother, stating “she’s mine” as the child clung to the seat, was previously jailed for killing her own baby daughter in a scalding bath.
The woman, who cannot be identified due to a court order, faced a sentence hearing on Wednesday for the terrifying ordeal on a Riverwood street on the afternoon of December 30, 2022. The Downing Centre District Court heard the child now harbours a “fear of strangers”.
The bus stop where a woman tried to kidnap a nine-year-old girl from her grandmother.Credit: Rhett Wyman
The 49-year-old offender spent 4½ years behind bars for the 2003 manslaughter of her eight-month-old daughter, who was severely burnt after being lowered into hot water and then wheeled around in a pram for hours.
Court records indicate the woman has a long history of drug use and mental illness including schizophrenia. However, in a report tendered by the defence, a psychiatrist said the woman was not suffering psychosis or symptoms related to schizophrenia at the time of the 2022 incident.
The details of the woman’s latest crime can be revealed by the Herald after she pleaded guilty to attempting to take a child with intent to remove from parental control and common assault.
‘Nanny, stop her’
According to the agreed facts, obtained by this masthead, the woman approached a nine-year-old girl and her grandmother as they waited for a bus to the shops. The offender, who did not know the pair, grabbed the girl’s left arm and said, “Come with me now”.
The grandmother replied, “Excuse me, what are you doing?” She grabbed the offender’s clothing and her arm, and yelled, “Stop, get away from my granddaughter”.
The offender replied: “That’s my daughter.”
The facts state the child was “afraid” and “grabbed hold of the bus shelter, wrapping both arms around the seat” as the woman pulled her left arm with both hands.
“[The girl] was screaming ... saying, “Nanny, stop her, stop her.”
The grandmother was poked in the eye as she tried to break the offender’s hold on the girl, who tried to kick as she was held.
“She’s coming with me, I’m going to take her, she’s mine,” the offender said.
The grandmother managed to break the woman’s grip on her granddaughter before the offender “walked away, holding up her fists”. The woman was arrested at the bus stop later that day with a bag of children’s toys in her possession and “appeared to be highly intoxicated”.
In a victim impact statement, read to the court, the girl’s mother said her innocent and curious daughter is now a “highly emotional little girl who panics and has meltdowns”.
The mother said her daughter has been scared in public that “someone was going to take one of the kids”, checks all the doors are locked each night, and “finds comfort in locking herself in her room away from the world”.
The woman said her mother, the girl’s grandmother, is depressed and unable to leave home.
Baby’s tragic bath death
In 2003, the offender killed her baby daughter by lowering her into a plastic bath filled with hot water, causing “extreme” redness and loss of skin, according to the sentencing judgment. The child suffered burns to 75 per cent of her body.
A neighbour told police the baby’s screaming was “very loud, continuous screeching and crying”.
The woman and her de facto partner argued about what happened, but neither called for help. The woman dried her baby with a towel, rubbed her with cream and shampoo, put her in a pram and left the unit in the middle of the night.
In the following hours, she tried to get drugs and offered to perform a sex act on a passing driver. At 3.30am, police responded to a call that a woman was “acting suspiciously” and found the mother and child on the street.
The baby girl was under a blanket in the pram and her skin was “very cold”. She was taken to hospital but pronounced dead.
The woman told police she had given her daughter a bath and she “got red dye all over her”.
“I tried to wash it off, but it wouldn’t come off,” she said.
She was told her daughter had died and replied, “She isn’t dead. I can’t believe she is dead” and “Do you think we can bring her back?”
The woman was sentenced in 2005 for manslaughter on the basis of gross criminal negligence and released on parole in 2008.
Judge David Wilson on Wednesday noted the woman previously referred to her baby’s death as “one mistake”, which he said “reeks of seriously downplaying” the offending. The woman has been in custody since the 2022 incident and will be sentenced at a later date.
If you or anyone you know needs help, call Lifeline on 13 11 14 (and see lifeline.org.au), 1800 RESPECT (1800 737 732), the National Sexual Abuse and Redress Support Service on 1800 211 028 or Kids Helpline on 1800 551 800.
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