Mum spared jail for attack on kids

By Tim Clarke
June 1, 2005
From: AAP 
A DEPRESSED mother who tried to poison her three children by giving them anti-nausea medication she had crushed up in milkshakes and doughnuts has been spared prison by a Perth judge.

The 35-year-old woman, whose name has been suppressed to protect the identity of her children, was allowed to walk free from Western Australia's Supreme Court today in what Judge Geoffrey Miller described as a "line-ball decision".
The woman admitted three counts of administering a stupefying drug with intent to commit the offence of wilful murder, and one count of attempted murder.

The court was told the woman was extremely depressed after the break up of her marriage last June, having left her husband earlier that month.

The woman formed the intention of killing the three children by putting them to sleep and then suffocating them with a pillow, before committing suicide herself.

After writing a suicide note in the morning, she visited three different pharmacies around Perth and purchased syringes and numbers of Phenergan tablets.

She then put the tablets in a food processor and crushed them into a powder, which she then placed into cream inside doughnuts.

After attempting to get the children to eat the doughnuts after picking them up from school, she also put the powder into an orange drink, milkshakes and ice-cream.

The children refused the food and drinks because of the taste.

Later that night, the woman approached her youngest child as he lay in bed and injected him with white spirit that she had placed in a syringe.

Although he was badly injured, he had since made a full recovery.

Judge Miller said the woman, according to reports, had been in a state of "double depression" at the time of the attempts on her children's lives.

"What presents to me is a situation in which it's clear that you were in deep depression when you committed these offences and that's the clear explanation for them," Judge Miller said.

"The offences are grave; there's no doubt about that."

Despite the gravity, Judge Miller said the case could be treated as exceptional and as such he could spare the woman prison.

"Foremost in my decision in that regard is your own prospect for rehabilitation, which will be much better served by intensive psychiatric and psychological counselling in the community," the judge said.

The woman was sentenced to five years in prison for attempted murder, suspended for two years, along with a two-year intensive supervision order for the charges of administering a stupefying drug.

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