A woman has been jailed for 12 years for the manslaughter of her stepdaughter after placing the child in a scalding hot bath as punishment some 50 years ago.
Janice Nix, 67, was sentenced at Isleworth Crown Court today, 48 years since five-year-old Andrea Bernard died in Thornton Heath, south London, in 1978.
Andrea’s death was initially treated as an accident, until her older brother Desmond Bernard went to police in 2022 with a new account of what happened, the trial revealed.
Beyond the manslaughter charge, Nix was also convicted of cruelty to Mr Bernard between October 1975 and June 1978, when he was seven to nine years old.
Mr Justice Nicholas Lavender, sentencing, told the defendant: “I’m sure that you ran the bath, you knew how hot it was, you told Andrea to get in the bath, she said it was too hot, but you either put her in the bath or made her get into it.
“And you heard her screams. At the very least, the risk ought to have been obvious to you.”
The retired probation officer cried through most of the hearing and wept loudly while the judge read his remarks.
Reading a victim impact statement, Mr Bernard said the abuse he and his sister suffered involved beatings with a belt and being forced to eat cat food – and led to Andrea’s death, leaving him “broken”.
Janice Nix, 67, was sentenced at Isleworth Crown Court today | MET POLICE
“The last memories I have of my sister’s life are piercing screams and lying about her death to survive,” he said.
“You took away her future and changed mine forever,” he said, addressing Nix, “your contrived grief at Andrea’s funeral, the lies, the tears. You fooled my family because they couldn’t imagine the unimaginable.
“You took their kindness for weakness and you manipulated them so that you couldn’t be found out. The time has come for you to acknowledge what you have done to Andrea and myself.”
Prosecutor Kerry Broome read out the statement of Angela Bernard, Desmond and Andrea’s biological mother, which described the little girl as “so sweet and loving”, and detailed how her death “completely destroyed me”.
Five-year-old Andrea Bernard died in Thornton Heath, south London, in 1978
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MET POLICE
On June 6, 1978, Nix was “furious” after Andrea ignored instructions not to leave the house and to help clean, shouting in an “extremely loud” voice before beating her, the trial was told.
Nix, then called Janice Thomas, had been in a relationship with the children’s father, also named Desmond Bernard.
Mr Bernard, giving evidence, told jurors: “I could hear Janice shouting ‘get in the bath’, and I could hear Andrea saying ‘the bath is too hot, mummy’, then I heard screaming and splashing.”
Mr Bernard said he then entered the bathroom and saw Nix cradling Andrea, who was “limp” and wrapped in a towel – “I could see skin falling off her,” he said.
Asked whether Nix said anything, Mr Bernard replied: “She asked me to say it was an accident, and to say that we were in the garden when it happened and that she would never beat me again.”
Andrea died nearly six weeks after arriving at hospital with burns to 50 per cent of her body, the court heard, with a burns expert telling the trial that a child exposed to water of this temperature would instinctively try to get out.
Prosecutors argued this meant Nix must have forcibly held parts of Andrea’s body underwater.
During the 1978 inquest investigation, Nix had initially claimed Andrea took a bath on her own and later complained of itchy legs before fainting – but has now admitted to giving a false account because she was “in a panic”.
The defendant, of Clapham, south London, worked for the Probation Service between 2014 and 2019 and won the Probation Service’s diversity and engagement award in 2015.
She had previously served two “substantial” terms of imprisonment for drug offences, the court was told.
She will serve two-thirds of her 12-year sentence before she can be released on licence.