Australian woman wrongfully jailed for killing her children gets $1.3M

UPI

4 days ago

Kathleen Folbigg (C) flanked by her counsel, Rhanee Rego (L), and friend Tracy Chapman (R), walks from the New South Wales Criminal Appeal Court in Sydney a free woman in December 2023 after having convictions for killing her four children formally quashed. File photo by Dan Himbrechts/EPA-EFE
Aug. 7 (UPI) -- Lawyers for an Australian Kathleen Folbigg, who spent two decades in prison after being wrongfully convicted of killing her four children as infants, have dismissed a $1.3 million compensation offer from the government as "woefully inadequate."
Folbigg's lawyer, Rhanee Rego called the payout -- which was only around a fifth of the $6.5 million or more that experts had expected the 58-year-old to receive -- "profoundly unfair and unjust" and demanded an independent review of the decision.
"The sum offered is a moral affront -- woefully inadequate and ethically indefensible. The system has failed Kathleen Folbigg once again," Rego said in a statement.
New South Wales Attorney General Michael Daley said the decision -- which came 19 months after she was acquitted of the murder of Patrick, Sarah and Laura and the manslaughter of Caleb -- was the result of "thorough and extensive" review of Folbigg's compensation claim.
He declined to discuss the sums involved as he said he did not have authority from Folbigg to do so.
Folbigg was sentenced to 40 years, later reduced to 30 years on appeal, for killing the children between 1989 and 1999, but her conviction, largely on circumstantial evidence, was quashed in December 2023 after a special commission of inquiry brought forward new science showing the children died of natural causes.
Rego said the ordeal had left Folbigg, who was for years portrayed as Australia's worst serial killer, traumatized with an ongoing impact that continued to affect her.
Calling it one of the most egregious miscarriages of justice in Australia, Rego said the compensation offer failed to "reflect the extent of the pain and suffering Kathleen has endured."
"An inquiry is needed to understand how the government decided on this figure."
Rego compared Folbigg's position to that of Lindy Chamberlain who was wrongly convicted and sentenced to life for killing her baby daughter after claiming the infant had been taken by a dingo during a camping trip in the outback.
After being acquitted of murder by the Supreme Court in 1988, Chamberlain subsequently received $1.1 million for the three years she was wrongfully imprisoned.
"Kathleen Folbigg spent two decades in prison, yet for her wrongful imprisonment she has been offered $1.3 million," said Rego.
Tracy Chapman, friend and spokesperson for Folbigg, said the money would barely cover her expenses after decades of incarceration and she was left speechless by the offer.
"She [Folbigg] literally said, 'I have no words,'" Chapman said.
"She's been in prison for twenty years and you're asking her to live off that amount of money with bills, and the ongoing costs, it's not enough. She's going to need mental health support for the rest of her days."
After Folbigg was released in 2023, forensic criminologist Xanthe Mallett said she expected a payout of more than $6.5 million, while University of New South Wales Professor Gary Edmond said the compensation awarded "would have to be" the highest in the country's history.