Vic: Teenager escapes jail after punching newborn to death

AAP General News (Australia)
04-28-2005
Vic: Teenager escapes jail after punching newborn to death

By Mariza Fiamengo

MELBOURNE, April 28 AAP - A schoolgirl who secretly carried her baby to full term and
then punched it to death moments after giving birth feared losing her parents' respect
after becoming pregnant, a court was told today.

Lauren Jayne Curnow, who had pleaded guilty to one count of infanticide, was a 17-year-old
secondary school student at the time of the killing and never told her family or friends
after she became pregnant to her boyfriend, the Victoria Supreme Court was told.

Justice Bernard Bongiorno today sentenced her to a three-year good behaviour bond and
ordered her to undertake counselling and other treatment under the directions of her psychologist.

Crown prosecutor Jeremy Rapke QC told the court Curnow, now 18, of the Ballarat suburb
Wendouree, stayed home from school, because of labour pains, on August 17 last year.

She gave birth to a boy in her bedroom while kneeling on her bed. At the time her mother
was outside washing her car.

Curnow cut the baby's umbilical cord with scissors, punched the baby several times
to the head, wrapped it in a towel and placed it beside her bed, the court was told.

Her mother found the baby wrapped in a towel in her daughter's bedroom and took them
both to the Ballarat Base Hospital.

Curnow's lawyer Tony Lewis told the court his client kept her pregnancy a secret because
she was afraid of how her family and friends would respond.

"She kept that secret from not only her parents and also her friends ... she did so
because of an underlying fear of losing the respect and love of her parents, and in particular
her father," Mr Lewis said.

Judge Bongiorno said some people who did not know all the facts of the case may believe
the sentence did not punish Curnow, but he said he did not believe she should go to jail.

"I am satisfied that the interest of the community and particularly the interest of
you are best served by you becoming a useful member of society, certainly not by going
to jail," he said.

"(Your) punishment could be served without you having to serve more time in jail."

Curnow's mother Debra Curnow told the court that her daughter's relationship with her
father was strained at times and he was a strong disciplinarian.

She said her husband loved his daughters but showed it through firm discipline.

When initially questioned by police about the baby's death, Curnow said she collapsed
on the baby due to exhaustion from giving birth, the court heard.

However, when told the baby's injuries did not fit that explanation she admitted that
she hit the boy several times after giving birth because she did not want to keep him.

Mr Lewis told the court his client had never been in trouble with the law before, had
pleaded guilty at the earliest time and there was "powerful" evidence of her contrition.

Infanticide, carrying a maximum jail sentence of five years, is a crime where a woman
willfully causes the death of her baby when she has not fully recovered from the effects
of giving birth.

Austin Health psychiatrist Anne Buist told the court that while Curnow knew she was
pregnant, her method of coping was through denial and when the baby was born she had an
overwhelming lack of psychological coping skills and she suffered a dissociative psychosis.

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