SYDNEY (Reuters) -Australia’s state of New South Wales has offered compensation of A$2 million ($1.31 million) to a woman wrongfully jailed for two decades over the deaths of her four young children, but her lawyer dismissed the figure as “unfair and unjust”.
Kathleen Folbigg, 58, was convicted in 2003 of murdering three of her children, and of manslaughter in the death of the fourth.
She was later pardoned, freed and had her convictions quashed in 2023, after an independent inquiry found new scientific evidence that the children could have died from natural causes or a genetic mutation.
On Thursday, the state’s Attorney General Michael Daley said the government had made an ex-gratia payment to Folbigg after “extensive consideration” of her compensation claim in July 2024.
Such a payment is a voluntary gift that does not arise from a legal obligation.
Folbigg’s lawyer Rhanee Rego called the payment “profoundly unfair and unjust” as it did not reflect the extent of pain and suffering endured by her client.
“The sum offered is a moral affront – woefully inadequate and ethically indefensible,” Rego said. “The system has failed Kathleen Folbigg once again.”
She called for an inquiry into how the figure was decided.
Folbigg lost not only her children, but 20 of the best years of her life, and continued to feel lasting effects from the trauma, Rego said.
The children, aged between 19 days and 18 months, died over a 10-year period from 1989 to 1999.
Folbigg was convicted in 2003 based on the prosecution’s case that she had smothered each of them, despite a lack of physical supporting evidence. Her sentence of 40 years was later reduced to 30, with a 25-year period of non-parole on appeal.
At the time, tabloids had labelled her “the most hated woman in Australia”, and a “monstrous mother”, among other epithets.
A judicial inquiry in 2019 found the evidence reinforced Folbigg’s guilt. But a second inquiry led by former chief justice Thomas Bathurst revisited her convictions in 2022 and concluded there was reasonable doubt about her guilt.
($1=A$1.5321)
(Reporting by Christine Chen in Sydney; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)
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