Latest news with #fostermother
News.com.au
23-05-2025
- News.com.au
William Tyrrell's foster mum has big legal win
William Tyrrell's foster mother has had her conviction for assaulting and intimidating a child quashed on appeal after a judge found that she was under extraordinary stress at the time amid a heartbreaking set of circumstances surrounding the toddler's disappearance. The 59-year-old woman, who cannot be identified, appeared before the Downing Centre District Court on Friday where she learned her convictions would be quashed and her sentence would be reduced over a series of incidents which were captured on secret police recordings. The foster mother was convicted for a number of incidents which relate to a child, who is not William, inside her family home in 2021. She appeared before an appeal hearing in April, arguing that her sentence and convictions should be quashed for charges of intimidation and assault. She was found guilty in the local court of intimidation relating to threats to slap the child during an argument inside her family home over the unloading of a dishwasher in 2021. As part of the investigation into William's disappearance, police planted surveillance devices in the home and car of William's foster parents. In a recording previously played to the court, the woman repeatedly admonished the child, saying at one point: 'I'm going to slap you' and 'I'm sick to death of it'. The woman was also convicted in the Local Court for two counts of assault after she pleaded guilty to kicking the child and hitting the child with a wooden spoon. She was sentenced to a 12-month community corrections order. The court heard the incidents occurred in January and October 2021 but she was not charged until November that year because police were waiting for her to appear at a secretive NSW Crime Commission hearing. Her legal team argued the wooden spoon incident was a case of 'excessive lawful correction', pointing out she had shown remorse immediately to the child and a friend. Judge Miiko Kumar found while the intimidation and assault offences were proven, she said they should have been dealt with without proceeding to conviction, She quashed the woman's convictions and ordered that she serve a 12-month conditional release order, which require her to be of good behaviour. Judge Kumar took into account the woman's mental health, that she had led a 'blameless' life, had no criminal record and had been a person who had fostered many children. She said the incidents occurred against a 'unique' and 'heartbreaking' set of circumstances and her subjective case was 'about as powerful… as could be imagined'. 'At the time she had been under an extraordinary degree of emotional distress in the shadow of the disappearance of a foster child without knowing what had been his fate,' Judge Kumar said. The woman did not speak to media outside court on Friday as lengthy court proceedings against the woman and her husband came to an end. The court previously heard she was considered by police to be a person of interest and that she was suspected of having disposed of William's body. It's an allegation she was repeatedly denied and her barrister John Stratton SC earlier this year described them as 'unfounded suspicions'. William was three when he vanished from his foster grandmother's home at Kendall on the NSW Mid-North Coast in September 2014. No one has ever been charged with William's disappearance and an inquest into his suspected death is due to hand down its findings in the near future. The woman was charged with lying to the Crime Commission after being asked about the wooden spoon incident. And she was in November 2022 acquitted after a magistrate found it could not be found beyond a reasonable doubt that she had knowingly lied. In February, William's foster father also had his conviction quashed for intimidating a child relating to an incident during which he yelled and swore at the child as he took them to school in November, 2020.
ABC News
23-05-2025
- ABC News
Former foster mother of William Tyrrell has conviction overturned over different child
The former foster mother of missing boy William Tyrrell has had her conviction for assaulting and intimidating a different child overturned due to her "unique and heartbreaking stresses". The woman, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, successfully appealed her conviction for two counts of assault and two counts of intimidation against the child. She was initially placed on a 12-month community corrections order, which required that a conviction be recorded against her name in March last year. On Friday, Judge Miiko Kumar found the four offences against the 59-year-old were "proven" but determined that the sentence was "too severe" and overturned the conviction. "The appellant [the woman] has experienced a number of traumatic events, the most being the disappearance of a child who she clearly loved," Judge Kumar told Downing Centre District Court. "I accept that she experienced a combination of factors, which were unique and heartbreaking stresses. "She has been described as a blameless character, which I accept." The woman wiped away tears as she was instead ordered to serve a 12-month conditional release order. The 59-year-old previously pleaded guilty to two assault charges after she hit the child with a wooden spoon and kicked them in the thigh in 2021. Magistrate Susan McIntyre later found her guilty of intimidation, including by saying the child was going to "cop it" during an argument, and that they were being a "smarty pants" and would get a "slap across the face". Judge Kumar accepted the woman's argument that the offences were in the "low end" of objective seriousness. "She's a person whose culpability on any view must be regarded as being at a low level and one, which is strongly mitigated by as powerful [of a] subjective case as could be imagined," the judge said. At the time the woman spoke to a friend about the pressure she was under following William's disappearance, and Judge Kumar found she had demonstrated "genuine remorse" for the psychical assaults. The offences arose after the home and cars of William's former foster parents were bugged by NSW Police for about a year. William disappeared from his foster grandmother's house near Kendall on the Mid North Coast in 2014, aged three. No-one has ever been charged over William's disappearance. The woman denies any involvement in his disappearance.
Daily Mail
23-05-2025
- Daily Mail
William Tyrrell's foster mum has her assault conviction tossed
The former foster mother of missing toddler William Tyrrell has overturned a conviction over the intimidation and assault of another child. The woman, who cannot be legally named, was convicted in March 2024 after magistrate Susan McIntyre found her threats to slap the child amounted to intimidation. She earlier pleaded guilty to two counts of assault after striking the child with a wooden spoon and kicking them on the thigh. Her conviction over these incidents was overturned on Friday at Sydney 's Downing Centre District Court. Judge Miiko Kumar found the offences proved but imposed a 12-month conditional release order without conviction. Five counts of intimidation brought against the foster mother over alleged incidents related to the child were dismissed by Ms McIntyre in March 2024. In February, William's former foster father had a conviction for intimidating the child tossed out after a successful District Court appeal. In that decision, Judge Sean Grant found the man did not intend to cause fear of harm when he screamed in frustration while taking the child to school. William was three years old when he went missing while playing at his foster grandmother's home in Kendall on the NSW mid-north coast on September 12, 2014. No one has ever been charged over his disappearance, although police have aired a theory that his foster mother disposed of his body after his accidental death. The woman denies having anything to do with William's disappearance.
News.com.au
22-05-2025
- News.com.au
William Tyrrell's foster mum breaks silence amid new claims aired about person of interest in case
William Tyrrell's foster mother has broken her silence to call for police to investigate a convicted child abuser allegedly linked to the victims of three unsolved murders. It follows a series of groundbreaking reports this week by Witness: William Tyrrell podcast, revealing that evidence of these alleged links has not been followed up by police. 'In the middle of William's inquest we find three more families who don't have answers,' said the woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons. 'That's not acceptable. How can they be forgotten?' Asked if she thought police should investigate this new evidence, much of which was tendered to the inquest into William's disappearance and suspected death, she said, 'Yes.' It is the first time the three-year-old's foster mother has spoken publicly since she was identified as a 'suspect' by police investigating William's disappearance in a leaked, front-page story in September 2021. That described police as 'now confident they will solve the mystery of the disappearance of the three-year-old boy' who was reported missing from a house on the NSW Mid North Coast in 2014. Almost four years on from that newspaper report the foster mother has not been charged and has repeatedly denied any involvement in what happened to William. After reviewing the police investigation, the lawyer leading an inquest into the case said last November it was 'beyond argument' that no forensic or eyewitness evidence had been found 'that provides a clue to his disappearance'. NSW Police Force detectives did submit a brief of evidence to the state's Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions in June 2023, seeking to charge William's foster mother over his disappearance. There has been no public statement of the ODPP's advice in the two years since, however, with a spokeswoman referring our questions about this to the police force, who themselves refused to answer. The same detectives did charge both of William's foster parents with unrelated offences, including assaulting and intimidating another child, who is not the three-year-old. William's foster father had his convictions overturned on appeal, and the foster mother will learn the results of her own appeal at a court hearing today. The convicted child abuser allegedly linked to the three unsolved murder victims in evidence before the inquest is a man called Frank Abbott. Abbott was previously identified as a 'person of interest' to police investigating William's disappearance, but was never called to answer questions at the inquest. Over the past week, has published a series of reports about the unsolved murders of 17-year-old Helen Harrison, 38-year-old Margaret Cox and 17-year-old Cherylee Masters. All three went missing close to where Abbott was living at the time and evidence before the inquest includes witnesses describing alleged links between him and each of the three victims. We are not suggesting the alleged links are true, or that Abbott was in any way involved in either case, just that they are contained in evidence before the inquest and have not been fully investigated. Abbott has previously been found not guilty of murdering Helen. Despite having possession of this evidence for several years now, the victim's families and other witnesses said they have not been contacted by the police. Abbott, who is in prison for sexually assaulting two girls and a boy, has privately denied any involvement in what happened to William.
