Kathleen Folbigg from Australia gave birth to her first child at the age of 21 and, like most new mothers, kept a diary of when her baby was fed, slept, burped and bathed. But the notes suddenly stopped after 19 days, when the child died. Over the next ten years, until 1999, Folbigg lost her second, third and fourth child, and the guilt she felt as a “failed” mother crept into her life. As a stunt, in 2003 her diaries were used as evidence that she suffocated her babies. This theory is supported by the Australian prosecutor’s statement that the loss of four children in one family is so rare that it would be almost impossible without human intervention, writes CNN. After spending the last 20 years in prison, she was released after a review of her sentence.

At trial, Kathleen Folbigg was found guilty of three counts of murder and one count of manslaughter and spent 20 years in prison. She was pardoned on June 5 in New South Wales, Australia, after a review found there were legitimate concerns about the original convictions.

Genetics offers hope

Kathleen Folbigg was released after scientists discovered a previously unknown mutant gene in her two daughters that could be fatal. This led to “reasonable doubt” about his conviction, which was an argument for clemency.

Confirmation of the genetic cause of her children’s deaths has ramifications beyond Australia for parents accused of killing or injuring their children, CNN reports, according to News.ro.

At the same time, the case has sparked calls for a better criminal review system in Australia so that other people who claim they have been wrongly convicted do not spend years in prison.

“Today is a victory for science and above all for truth,” Kathleen Folbigg said after her release in a video shot in rural northern New South Wales, where she is recuperating before re-presenting her case in court. appeals to have the convictions overturned.

Critics of her 2003 trial say prosecutors twisted Folbigg’s words and relied on a bias against motherhood to convince jurors that she was fundamentally unsuited for the role and that she had succumbed to the pressures of caring for the babies.

Improvements in the genetic tests used to free Folbigg give other families hope that science can explain why their children died, but experts say sometimes even that can’t exonerate parents — often mothers — accused of hurt them.

A false theory

Folbigg’s first child, Caleb, died in 1989, followed by Patrick, who died in 1991 at the age of 8 months after seizures that left him blind. Sarah died in the night of 1993 when she was 10 months old and Laura died in 1999 at the age of 18 months.

The first three deaths were initially attributed to sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), the term used when children under the age of 1 die for no apparent reason. Laura’s death first sparked suspicion after the coroner labeled the cause as “undetermined.”

The police began an investigation, and although Kathleen Folbigg’s then-husband Craig initially sided with her, he became convinced that she had killed her children and testified against her during the seven-week trial that ended with the mother being found guilty.

Meadow’s Law

Emma Cunliffe, a professor at the University of British Columbia’s Allard School of Law who has begun studying the trials of mothers accused of murder, says she noticed a key difference in Folbigg’s case. “Other mothers, whose cases I was going to study, were released. Kathleen’s conviction was the only thing that stood,” said Cunliffe, who called for Folbigg’s release in his 2011 book, Murder, Medicine and Motherhood.

In all cases, the convictions were based on a version of “Meadow’s Law,” a bogus theory promoted by discredited British pediatrician Roy Meadow that one sudden death in a family is a tragedy, two are suspicious, and three are a crime.

None of the cases had access to the genetic technology that ultimately freed Folbigg, but the mothers in the UK and Canada were cleared after the evidence was reviewed by the Criminal Justice Review Board, a body that does not exist in Australia.

The truth from my mother’s diaries

As the campaign for Folbigg’s release gained momentum, experts began to analyze her diaries, and a very different picture began to emerge of the woman presented in court as a child killer.

One of the experts, Sharmila Betts, a clinical psychologist with many years of experience working with mothers and in the field of child protection, analyzed the contents of her diaries in 2014. “In the absence of compelling medical evidence, (the prosecutor) introduced cryptic and subjective diary notes that Ms. Folbigg denied as confessions as evidence of guilt, thereby waiving the need to obtain more compelling medical evidence of the murder,” she wrote in the report filed as evidence in a recent investigation.

Betts told CNN that a woman who has lost four children will undoubtedly blame herself for their loss. “If you lose a child, there is pain. You lose the second, you lose the third, you lose the fourth. So, there is accumulated pain. But there is also the question: what about me?” – she explained. “She blames herself. She thinks she did something because no one explained to her what happened to those children,” says the psychologist.

Scientific explanation

In 2019, some of the world’s leading genetics experts believed they had found the answer. They sequenced the entire genomes of the children and their mother and found that Folbigg and her daughters, Sarah and Laura, carry a previously unknown variant of the CALM2 gene.

CALM genes regulate the protein calmodulin, which plays an important role in regulating sodium, potassium, and calcium levels for healthy heart function. The variants can cause cardiac arrhythmia, and the first sign of a problem can be sudden death.

Because there was no record of this gene variant, scientists were quick to present their findings at Folbigg’s sentencing hearing in 2019. The revision was enacted largely to hear objections to the use of the “Meadow Act” in litigation.

But because the genetic evidence was accepted as a late argument, the inquest presiding judge, retired judge Reginald Blanch, concluded that everything he had heard and read “increased the guilt of Mrs Folbigg”.

Kathleen Folbigg, released after 20 innocent years behind bars

The following year, in November 2020, 27 scientists published their evidence in a paper presenting the results of the full genome sequencing of Kathleen Folbigg and her children.

The findings convinced more than 100 of the world’s leading scientists that she had been wrongly convicted, and they signed a petition calling on the New South Wales government to launch a new inquiry.

In November 2022, investigators reported that Fallbigg’s deceased sons, Caleb and Patrick, were carriers of rare variants of the BSN (or Bassoon) gene, the deficiency of which is known to cause fatal epilepsy in mice. But most importantly, the researchers explained that Folbigg and her daughters were carriers of the CALM2-G114R variant and that, although it was completely new, a similar variant had been found in an American family where a 4-year-old boy and his 5-year-old sister died suddenly. suffered a cardiac arrest.

This time, retired judge Tom Bathurst accepted the scientific evidence and recommended clemency for Folbigg.

The science of genetics that helps other things

One of the study’s lead authors, Professor Carola Vinuesa, says the Kathleen Folbigg case has spurred other families and lawyers to come forward, seeking genetic evidence to exonerate mothers accused of harming their children.

Not all children died in these cases. But some mothers accused of harming their children are seeking a genetic explanation for their symptoms to counter child abuse charges. “Most of these mothers have not harmed their children, but the children have these very rare diseases. And in several cases that we’ve already worked on since Folbigg’s investigation, we’ve been able to make a genetic diagnosis. They are very rare. , so they’re not in the textbooks, you can’t find them easily,” said Carola Vinuesa.

Mothers are accused of “medical child abuse” or “faking or causing illness” — where caregivers harm otherwise healthy children or make up their symptoms to force hospital visits and medical tests. In the past, this behavior was known as Munchausen syndrome, which Meadow considered a mental illness. The same doctor was struck off the British medical register for providing grossly inaccurate statistics about sudden infant death syndrome during trials where some mothers were imprisoned.

healing

The world has changed since Kathleen Folbigg was incarcerated, except for advances in genetic testing. She entered the chamber in the same year that the Concorde made its last flight, former US President George W. Bush declared victory in Iraq, and MySpace emerged as a new social network. The global launch of the iPhone was still four years away.

On her first day of freedom, Folbigg was “confused” by phones and excited about the opening of video-on-demand services, her friend Tracy Chapman said at a news conference broadcast live on national television. “She just wants to be able to live the life she’s been missing for the last 20 years,” said Chapman, who said the animals are part of her friend’s healing therapy.

In a video released to media on June 6, Folbigg can be seen arranging flowers, including the delicate white buds of gypsophila, a plant known as “Baby’s Breath.”

“For the last 20 years that I have been in prison, I have always thought and will always think about my children, I miss my children, I miss them and I love them terribly,” she says.

If she had survived, Caleb, her first child, would have been 34 years old today, and Laura’s last child would have been 25 years old. Perhaps now, at the age of 56, Kathleen would have become a grandmother.

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Questions are already being raised as to why Folbigg had to fight so hard for her freedom when women in similar situations were being released elsewhere. Even after the scientific evidence was released, it took the government more than a year to convene a new investigation and another year before Folbigg was pardoned.

The Australian Academy of Sciences acted as an independent scientific adviser to the second inquiry to ensure the world’s leading scientists were heard.

Now, lawyers are fighting to make it easier for others wrongfully accused to seek justice. Folbigg’s legal team and other associations, including the Bar Council, the Sydney Institute of Criminology and the Australian Bar Alliance, say Australia needs a post-sentence judicial review body to look into other potential miscarriages of justice.

In Australia, most criminal cases are dealt with by the state and territory court system, so any national review body needs agreement between different levels of government. (Source: News.ro / Photo: Dreamstime.com)