by Kathleen Folbigg was vilified as a baby killer and “the most hated woman” in Australia when she was convicted in 2003 of murdering three of her children and the manslaughter of another.
But on Thursday, Folbigg’s convictions were overturned by an appeals court after an investigation that examined new scientific evidence and found there was reasonable doubt about his guilt.
She had previously been pardoned and released in June after 20 years behind bars.
The case could result in the largest compensation for a wrongful conviction in Australia and a reckoning for the nation’s legal system.
“For almost a quarter of a century, I faced disbelief and hostility,” Folbigg said after being acquitted.
“I suffered abuse in all its forms. I hoped and prayed that one day I could be here with my name cleared. I hope no one else has to suffer what I suffered.”
‘They selected words and phrases from my diaries’
Folbigg’s original guilty verdict was not based on medical evidence explaining how his four young children (Caleb, Patrick, Sarah and Laura) died between 1989 and 1999, when they were between 19 days and 18 months old.
Instead, the prosecution relied heavily on Folbigg’s diary entries as admissions of guilt. No trauma, diary or grief experts were called to testify.
The case against Folbigg also rested on Meadow’s Law, a controversial and now discredited precept under which three or more sudden infant deaths in a family were murders until proven otherwise.
In a diary entry written in 1998 about Laura, the last of her children to die, Folbigg wrote: “I shouted at her with such anger that it scared her, she wouldn’t stop crying. He got so bad that he almost dropped her on the ground about her and left her.”
“I restrained myself long enough to put her down and walk away. I went to my room and left her crying. It probably only lasted 5 minutes, but it seemed like a lifetime. I feel like the worst mother on this earth. Afraid that she will leave me now. Like Sara did. She knew he had a bad temper sometimes and was cruel to her and she left. With a little help.”
Folbigg on Thursday accused prosecutors of taking his words out of context.
“They carefully selected words and phrases from my journals. Those books contained my private feelings, which I wrote for myself,” she said.
“No one expects strangers to read that kind of stuff, much less have opinions on it. They took my words out of context and turned them against me. “They accused me of something I never wrote about, never did, and never could do.”
Two-decade fight for Folbigg ‘herculean effort’
It wasn’t the simple workings of the legal system that got Folbigg finally freed, according to her lawyer, Rhanee Rego, who has worked pro bono since 2017.
Australia does not have an independent body to investigate possible miscarriages of justice, unlike the United Kingdom, United States, New Zealand and Canada, which have independent commissions to review convictions.
As Rego said, Folbigg’s case was based on “a large group of good people who saw injustice and did something about it.”
One of them was Emma Cunliffe, a justice expert at the University of British Columbia who in 2011 published Murder, Medicine and Motherhood about the Folbigg case.
She argued that she had been wrongfully convicted and that the diary entries were not those of a guilty woman, but rather those of a grieving mother trying to make sense of her trauma.
She denounced misogynistic reasoning in Folbigg’s case, pointing out that normal behaviors such as working part-time and putting her children in daycare so she could go to the gym were considered suspect in court.
A breakthrough came in 2018 when research by a team of experts, including immunologist Professor Carola Vinuesa, discovered that Folbigg and her two daughters, Laura and Sarah, carried a rare genetic variation known as CALM2-G114R. She suggested there was a high probability the deaths were natural.
Vinuesa gave evidence at a 2019 judicial inquiry into Folbigg’s conviction. She also examined the evidence from the initial trial and confirmed Folbigg’s guilt.
Genetic evidence and new medical research by an international team of scientists, which included the identification that the two boys, Caleb and Patrick, carried variants in a gene known as BSN “that causes lethal early-onset epilepsy in mice” was revealed. raised again in another investigation earlier this year.
It was sparked by leading scientists who called for Folbigg’s release based on compelling evidence that her children had died of natural causes. The 2023 inquiry found there was reasonable doubt surrounding Folbigg’s convictions and in June she was pardoned and released.
One of Folbigg’s biggest supporters was his childhood friend Tracy Chapman, who always believed he was innocent. For 20 years. Chapman faced insults and death threats as she supported Folbigg during failed appeals.
“The 20-year fight for Kathleen has been a herculean effort,” he said. “It cost jobs, lost income and shattered lives and relationships. “It also required enormous mental fortitude.”
Folbigg said she was grateful that updated science and genetics had provided answers about how her children died. But, she added, the legal answers were there to prove her innocence in 1999.
“They were ignored and dismissed,” he said. “The system preferred to blame me rather than accept that sometimes children can and do die suddenly, unexpectedly and heartbreakingly.”
A reckoning for Australia’s legal system
However, Folbigg considers herself one of the “lucky” ones.
“I have the opportunity, with support, to rebuild my life. But there are many other people who are not so lucky. “We need to be humble and open to improving the system to ensure the truth is revealed because the truth and correct legal outcomes are important.”
Rego, the lawyer, said the case should be the tipping point that forces Australia to introduce an independent body like the UK’s Criminal Cases Review Commission.
“While this is Kathleen’s story, it exemplifies broader problems in our legal system: a poorly designed review system, unable to timely identify and rectify miscarriages of justice.”
Rego said that now that their convictions had been overturned there should be compensation from the state. He would not give a figure, but he suggested it would be “greater than any substantial payment that has been made before.”
New South Wales Attorney General Michael Daley said the government would consider any request for compensation.
“After everything that has happened in the last 20 years, it is impossible not to feel great sympathy for everyone involved,” he said.
When Folbigg was released from prison in June, she moved to the Chapman farm to heal and spend time with those who had supported her.
“My children are here with me today and will be close to my heart for the rest of my life,” he said Thursday. “I loved my children and always will.”
