NANNY WHO KILLED BABY SPARED JAIL
Australian nanny Louise Sullivan was preparing to fly home to Sydney last night after being given a 15-month suspended sentence for shaking to death a six-month-old baby in her care.The 27-year-old - described as having a "psychopathic disorder" and being "on the edges of mental retardation" - was told by an Old Bailey judge that her crime of manslaughter would normally warrant her being sent straight to jail.
But the fact that she was unaware of mental deficiencies caused by being born without a thyroid gland diminished her culpability and meant her circumstances were exceptional, Mr Justice Mitchell said.
After hearing the sentence, which was suspended for two years, baby Caroline's parents, Marcel and Muriel Jongen, appeared shaken and confused.
But the 42-year-old Dutch investment banker later said he and his wife, a 37-year-old French financial analyst who broke out screaming during Monday's proceedings, had no desire for vengeance.
"I will never forget Mr Jongen saying that they didn't wish to destroy Louise Sullivan's life," said Detective Chief Inspector Phil Wheeler, senior investigating officer.
"But they are still very, very upset." Sullivan, looking incredulous and close to tears, embraced her counsel before leaving court shielded by her mother, Robyn, and father, Barry.
She will leave for Australia this week where she is expected to follow a prolonged course of psychiatric and psychological treatment.
However, she is under no obligation to do so, nor need she contact the New South Wales probation officer offered her, or heed the court's advice not to work with children.
Passing sentence, Judge Mitchell told the nanny, who admitted shaking the baby, causing severe brain damage, at her home in Cricklewood, north London, in April 1997: "Nothing can put the clock back.
Nothing can restore that baby to that mother and father.
No sentence imposed upon you can mend the pain of the parents or the anguish.
"I can but hope that, having braved the ordeal of this proceeding, they can understand why I have, with some reluctance, allowed you to return home to Australia." The judge said Sullivan's IQ of 81 - which put her "on the edges of mental retardation" according to Anthony Cairns, a forensic psychiatrist who examined her on Monday night - was compounded by the late diagnosis of her hyperthyroidism, a condition that meant she was unable to make swift judgments or to think flexibly, and which led her to wrongly apply a "shake and shout" technique to the baby.
"The sad truth can be stated very simply: with that particular deficit in your mental capability, you were wholly unsuitable for the career you chose and for the work you were employed to do," Judge Mitchell added.
"There was, in truth, a concealed but massive question mark over your ability to cope with the ups and downs and occasional crises that can easily arise during the first months of a baby's life." The judge continued: "Even with your mental incapacity, had I been satisfied that you had some real measure of appreciation of your disability, I would have sent you straight to prison.
I am told, however, that you have not the slightest insight into the existence of your problem.
I accept that.
No one else did, no one knew and no one even inquired into the implications of hyperthyroidism.
Had they done so, an alert would have been signalled." He said Sullivan had not intended to shake Caroline to death, nor was it "by any stretch of the imagination, an act committed in temper or gratuitous violence".
She had shown genuine and deep remorse for the baby she described as "the sweetest little girl I ever looked after", had recognised the pain of her former employers, and was of previous good character.
Nevertheless, her action was "wholly inappropriate".
"What you did constituted a grave breach of the duty you owed to that baby.
You exposed her to a high level of risk and the risk was that she would die," he added.
Caroline died after being taken off a life-support machine five days after Sullivan shook her with "severe" force for five to 10 seconds until her brain "shook like a jelly in a mould," the court had heard.
After yesterday's sentence, the police - who had originally sought to prosecute Sullivan for murder, before she pleaded guilty to manslaughter, and whose nine-month investigation involved officers travelling to Australia - said they accepted the court's decision "as professional officers".
