Teenager who killed her baby and left the body in a toilet block is spared jail because she was impregnated by her paedophile stepdad
- A woman suffocated her baby when she was 14 to hide her step-father's abuse
- DNA evidence led detectives to charging the woman for the 1995 murder
- She pleaded guilty to infanticide and was given a 16-month suspended sentence
A victim of child sexual abuse who admitted killing her newborn baby when she was a teenager in Western Australia, then leaving the infant's body in a caravan park toilet block, has been spared jail.
The woman cannot be named because she was just 14 when she suffocated the infant in Kambalda, in WA's Goldfields region, in July 1995.
Cold Case Homicide Squad detectives charged her with wilful murder last year after her DNA was linked to evidence collected from the scene 24 years earlier.
The wilful murder offence was discontinued and she instead pleaded guilty to infanticide.
The woman admitted to suffocating her newborn before dumping the body in a toilet block at Kambalda Caravan Park (pictured) in 1995 after she was impregnated by her step-father
In the Perth Children's Court on Monday, Judge Hylton Quail handed the woman a 16-month suspended prison sentence.
Prosecutors had not sought an immediate jail term, noting that the child's conception was the result of persistent sexual abuse at the hands of the accused's stepfather who has since been charged with historical child sex offences.
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The court heard the then-teenager's actions had been an attempt to conceal her pregnancy and the birth of her child.
Acknowledging the pregnancy and seeking help would likely have exposed the crimes of her stepfather, a person she was 'willing to protect because of the corrupt relationship (he) had manufactured with her', prosecutors submitted.
The court heard the mother suffocated her baby to that would have exposed her step-father's abuse
Detectives last year travelled to regional Victoria to charge the woman, who has other children.
She was extradited to WA but was granted bail and allowed to return to Victoria.
The baby did not have a name, but others have referred to him as Rijul, meaning 'innocent' in Hindi.
Judge Gillian Braddock, who oversaw an earlier hearing, previously described the case as 'traumatic and tragic', saying the case was unlike anything she had come across before in this jurisdiction.
