00:00Janice Tracelye Nix, the jury have found you guilty of the manslaughter of Andrea Barnard and of cruelty towards Desmond
00:11Nicholas Barnard when he was a child.
00:14You killed Andrea Barnard by placing her in, or making her get in, a scalding hot bath.
00:23You did that on the 6th of June 1978, when she was five and you were 19.
00:31She and her brother Desmond were the children of your then partner, Desmond Emmanuel Barnard.
00:38You were supposed to look after them when he was out of the house, but you regularly ill-treated them.
00:46In particular, in the months leading up to the 6th of June 1978, when you were 18 or 19 and
00:54he was seven or eight,
00:55you repeatedly beat Desmond, both with and without a belt. You hit him with a metal pot, you burnt him
01:04with a cigarette, you made him eat cat food, and you forced him and his sister to sit in a
01:11cold bath.
01:13You put Andrea in, or made her get in, the scalding hot bath as a punishment.
01:20She sustained full-thickness burns over 50% of her body surface, i.e. over her legs and the lower
01:29part of her torso, including some way up her back.
01:33The time taken for her to sustain these burns will have depended on just how hot the bath was.
01:40The burns caused her death after over five weeks of suffering in hospital.
01:45Andrea Barnard's death was treated as an accident until her older brother, Desmond, Barnard went to police in 2022, with
01:55a new account of what happened.
01:57Nix was jailed for 12 years, having been sentenced to Isleworth Crown Court.
02:04You lied about the incident, and you made Desmond support your lie by promising to stop beating him, as a
02:11result of which Andrea's death was treated at the time as accidental.
02:16You took Andrea's life, and you caused grief and misery to her family.
02:22I have concluded that this is a case of high culpability, with a starting point of 12 years' imprisonment, because
02:29of the high risk of death or grievous bodily harm, which was, or ought to have been, obvious to you.
02:36I reached this conclusion because I'm sure that you ran the bath, you knew how hot it was, you told
02:44Andrea to get in the bath, she said that it was too hot, but you either put her in the
02:49bath or made her get into it.
02:51You did so to the extent that 50% of her body surface was exposed to the hot water for
02:58long enough to cause her burns.
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