Stepmum jailed for 1978 killing of girl, 5

A woman who killed her five-year-old stepdaughter by scalding her in a bath in 1978 has been jailed for 12 years.

Janice Nix, 67, punished Andrea Bernard by forcing her into the piping hot water in Thornton Heath, south London, nearly 50 years ago.

Andrea suffered severe burns to half her body and died in hospital on 13 July 1978, five weeks later. The jury heard her death had been treated as an accident until Andrea's older brother, Desmond Bernard, went to police in 2022.

Nix was found guilty of Andrea's manslaughter. Sentencing her at Isleworth Crown Court, Judge Justice Lavender said: "I'm sure that you ran the bath, you knew how hot it was... You heard her screams."

"At the very least the risk ought to have been obvious to you," the judge added.

Nix, of Clapham, was also convicted of cruelty to Desmond Bernard between October 1975 and June 1978, when he was aged seven to nine.

Bernard, now 56, read out a victim impact statement in court and addressed Nix directly, saying: "Your actions robbed me of my sister, and my sister of her life."

Nix was shaking her head and appeared to be mouthing words while he spoke to her.

She will serve two-thirds of the 12-year prison sentence before she can be released on licence, the judge said.

• Warning: distressing details are included in this article

Jurors heard that on 6 June 1978, Nix was "furious" after Andrea ignored orders not to leave the house and to help with cleaning.

Bernard said he later heard the bath running after Andrea had suffered a beating from Nix.

He added: "I could hear Janice shouting 'get in the bath' and I could hear Andrea saying 'the bath is too hot mummy'."

Bernard then heard screaming before Nix began calling for Andrea to "wake up".

He entered the bathroom and saw Nix cradling Andrea, who was "limp" and wrapped in a towel.

Andrea died nearly six weeks after arriving at hospital with burns to 50% of her body.

A burns expert told the trial a child exposed to water hot enough to cause those injuries would instinctively try to stand up to escape, rather than remain seated.

Prosecutors suggested that Nix must have forcibly held some of Andrea underwater.

Bernard said Nix had asked him 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".

"The last memories I have of my sister's life are piercing screams and lying about her death to survive," Bernard said in court.

"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."

A statement from Andrea's mother, Angela Bernard, was also read to the court and she described her as the "light of my life" and a sweet, loving, happy child.

At the time of Andrea's death, Nix was a teenager known as Janice Thomas and was in a relationship with the children's father and was effectively their stepmother, the court heard.

During the 1978 inquest investigation, Nix had initially claimed Andrea took a bath on her own and later complained of itchy legs before fainting, jurors heard.

But she admitted during her trial to giving a false account of the events to the coroner because she was "in a panic" over having failed to supervise Andrea while she took a bath.

During a 2022 police interview, Nix gave a version of events that differed "significantly" from her original statement from the time, having not been told that investigators had found it, the Metropolitan Police said.

She also claimed that the coroner found Andrea's death was because of an overheated bath caused by a faulty boiler - something not mentioned in the report.

The year before the police investigation was launched, Nix published a book on her life titled Breaking Out and written with Elizabeth Sheppard.

In the book, Nix told the story of how she went from being a major drug dealer dubbed Mamma J to turning her life around and becoming an award-winning probation officer.

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 drugs offences, the court was told.

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