Mothers Who Murder (17 page)

The press reported more angry scenes outside the Supreme Court of New South Wales when Abrahams arrived in the police van for trial. Inside, the courtroom was packed as Justice Harrison handed down his sentence. Abrahams remained withdrawn, with her back to the public gallery, showing no emotion as she learnt her fate. How many of those witnessing the spectacle firsthand, or those who read about it later, would have considered this a strange response? Knowing what we know about Abrahams, her childhood and her emotional and intellectual limitations, it is, I would think, the only way we could have expected her to behave.

The mother did not escape public vitriol; the local community was asked to restrain its anger so that Abrahams could receive a fair trial. It’s questionable whether this happened, with death threats levelled at Abrahams and calls for the reintroduction of capital punishment and summary justice. Some members of the Mount Druitt community formed the ‘Voice of Kiesha’ support group, represented by purple t-shirts carrying their logo. Purple was Kiesha’s favourite colour.

The were abusive shouts of ‘Rot in hell’ from the public gallery as Abrahams was led away. They certainly show the level of public anger towards a mother who could commit the worst crime of all – to hurt her own child. Someone else shouted ‘I didn’t even know her and I loved her more than you’. Sadly, and you could argue as a result of Abrahams’ background and intellectual disabilities, that is probably true.

I was a little surprised to find balance in the media coverage of the event. Newspaper articles listed the case details, but they also told of Abrahams’ early life – the
abuse, the problems, the violence and neglect. The
Sydney Morning Herald
ran a particularly interesting piece in July 2013,
¹⁰
in which the writer noted that all too often criminal offenders have suffered hard and terrible childhoods. This news of course is not novel. Kristi Abrahams was mentioned in the article, as was the fact that she was abused as a child. This information was not presented as an excuse. But it is refreshing that in 2013 we look for reasons rather than just at outcomes, and that the mass media is taking a more responsible view on criminal behaviour, seeing it as more than just a matter of offender accountability, but rather as a problem that should be faced and dealt with by society as a whole. I wholly commend the author and the paper for the piece. Perhaps we have learnt something about why these situations arise after all.

COMPARATIVE CASES

Abrahams had an intellectual disability, an IQ of 68, a significantly disadvantaged background and had suffered a highly dysfunctional childhood. The defence said she was a ‘product of what happened to her’. We can never make excuses for the terrible things people do, and sadly, many, many people grow up in disadvantaged circumstances and suffer from intellectual disabilities. But not all of those people end up murdering one of their children. So on the one hand I think it’s too simplistic to say someone had a hard time growing up therefore what they do can be excused. But on the other, there are certainly patterns to some of these types of incidents – patterns I think we ignore at our peril – and some of these circumstances do at least constitute mitigating circumstances.

Abrahams showed remorse and is unlikely to reoffend. Abrahams was put in a foster home as a ten-year-old child, after her mother died. She was not close to her father, and claims she was abused as a child, which is a common trait seen in many who then go on to abuse others.

There is no question really over Abrahams’ guilt. She killed Kiesha, but there is a question over whether she intended to harm her. The evidence indicates that she was at least ambivalent to her daughter’s suffering. If we’re looking for comparisons to other scenarios, Dean Shillingsworth’s case shares some frightening similarities. Both mothers had disadvantaged backgrounds, and both children had suffered numerous physical assaults, partly because they reminded their mothers of their biological fathers. DoCS were aware of both families, and I would argue that there were numerous opportunities in both cases for someone to step in.

There are also similarities to Kathleen Folbigg’s background, a comparison even drawn by the judge presiding over Abrahams’ trial. Judge Harrison noted that Folbigg was found guilty of the murder of her children over a ten-year period, as well as the infliction of grievous bodily harm and manslaughter of one child. Of course, these circumstances differ considerably from Abrahams, who was only convicted of harming one child, Kiesha. However, both mothers were considered to suffer from depression, and were psychologically damaged and incapable of bonding effectively with their children. In a comment reminiscent of one that could easily have been made in Kathleen Folbigg’s case, Champion (Abraham’s psychologist) said that the fact that Kristi’s emotional needs had not been met, together with her other problems, probably
resulted in her inability to prioritise her children’s needs over her own. It would be easy to label her a bad mother, but given the circumstances of her childhood and the difficulties she suffered from, what could we expect of her?

CASE CLOSED

The women at Silverwater Women’s Correctional Centre in Sydney, where Abrahams will now spend at least the next sixteen years, mostly come from backgrounds of neglect, abuse and poverty, and many have associated psychological conditions. Approximately 90 per cent of women admitted to the prison have a history of emotional problems and/or mental illness, often associated with alcohol or substance abuse. Up to 50 per cent of these female inmates will have experienced physical, sexual or emotional violence or neglect as a child, sometimes all of these – and this would appear to be true in Abrahams’ case – and as many as 75 per cent of them would have been physically and emotionally abused as an adult. The trend is clear.

Abrahams will be among the lowest of the low, the most hated and the most vulnerable. In the surroundings in which Abrahams now finds herself, that makes for a hard and frightening life. The court documents from Abrahams’ prosecution note that there was evidence that Kristi Abrahams had an intellectual disability, a history of violence and a dysfunctional childhood. Sadly, this closely mirrors the general demographic of the women Abrahams will now live alongside. But does that absolve Abrahams of blame? I didn’t set out to write a social commentary, but statistics like that do make me wonder what can be done to reverse this drift.

In sentencing, Justice Harrison commented that the system of child protection is failing to effectively address the initial abuse and the consequences that flow from it. This makes the problem much more than one limited to criminal justice; this is about social justice. Importantly, in his summing up, Judge Harrison noted that mercy was as important as retribution. I concur, and would add that understanding is as important as blame.

Kristi Abrahams was from a disadvantaged background and was herself abused as a child; much like many of the women she now shares a jail with in Silverwater Women’s Correctional Centre. She fitted a sadly predictable stereotype of mothers who kill: the poverty stricken, disadvantaged, underprivileged and abused.

Keli Lane, however, does not fit the profile – she was young but was not the frightened or abused teenager. Instead, Lane was from a privileged background and was not found to have been suffering from any mental illness or disorder at the time it is alleged she murdered her newborn daughter, Tegan, in 1996. The unusual twist is that the child’s body has never been found. The case is made even more infamous by the fact that Lane was a former elite Australian water polo player, as well as the fact that those closest to Lane did not even know she was pregnant with Tegan. A perplexing situation, as Lane has never accepted any wrongdoing.

There are a number of alternatives to Lane being guilty of murder. One is that Lane is innocent, but then an alternative for what happened to the child would have to be provided as the child has never been found despite
exhaustive searches. Alternatively, Tegan could have died accidentally. Or we must consider that Lane did murder her baby, possibly as a result of the fact that she was suffering from a personality disorder; certainly her behaviour before and after Tegan’s birth was unusual.

We will go back to the beginning and look at the evidence for each of the three scenarios, that: Lane is innocent; Lane is guilty of murder; Tegan’s death was accidental. Much of the information here comes from the court documents,
¹
including Lane’s appeal against her murder charge in 2013,
²
which are freely available online, although access to the key trial decision documents was restricted at the time of writing,
³
possibly as a result of the appeal that was concluded in December 2013. Other details are taken from transcripts of police interviews with Lane or from the excellent chapter on the case by Kay Saunders.
⁴
This was an essential resource in the preparation of this summary, as was the superb book by Rachael Jane Chin,
⁵
which focuses entirely on this case.

THE SCENARIO

In 2010, Keli Lane, a talented sportswoman with Olympic aspirations, stood charged with the murder of her third child, Tegan Lane. How did she get there?

Born on 21 March 1975, Keli is the daughter of a retired police inspector and a nurse, Robert and Sandra. Both parents were very sporty, a trait they passed on to their daughter. A gifted athlete, Lane excelled at swimming and was encouraged to play water polo. She had every advantage growing up, attending MacKellar Girls Campus (then Manly Vale High School) in Manly, a northern Sydney suburb in which the family lived from the time Keli was four years old. Lane was never academically inclined, but excelled at water sports
at school and by the time Keli was in her teens she was a champion water polo player, having represented the state and national teams at junior level. The love of water polo and highly competitive nature would supposedly be a significant factor in the events that were to come.

Apart from being very involved with the local sporting community, Lane’s family were well known and well-connected socially, a fact that worked in Keli’s favour growing up as she was regarded as a young, beautiful, talented sportswoman, with the world at her feet. She was also popular and charismatic. Keli first found love with Aaron Tyack, who later commented that Manly was a cliquey place, where the socially well connected thrived, but that it was a small town with a distinct hierarchy. Given her family connections, Lane was at the top of the social tree. At seventeen Keli fell pregnant to Tyack. At this time, Lane was still in school and, having told only her boyfriend, decided to have the pregnancy terminated. She did not confide in her parents about the pregnancy, as she thought they would disapprove. Shortly afterwards her relationship with Tyack broke down. Later, Keli fell pregnant again; this time she chose to tell no one, not the baby’s father nor her parents. She also elected to abort this pregnancy.

Lane’s sporting career was begining to take off, as in 1993 she was chosen to represent New South Wales in the under 20s national water polo team. The team performed well, but the sport was not yet included in the Olympic line-up, although Keli’s dream was still to represent her country at the elite sporting event.

Keli was soon to fall in love again and in 1994 she started dating Duncan Gillies, who came from a professional sporting family. Gillies was a talented sportsman
himself, excelling at rugby league, and enjoyed many of the same activities as Lane – drinking and socialising – and both were extremely competitive. Lane’s parents approved of this match, as the couple seemed well suited, and they dated for four years, from when Lane was aged nineteen to twenty-three.

In 1994 Lane began an Arts degree at the University of Newcastle, but she dropped out early on, deciding it was not for her. Although an outstanding athlete, Keli suffered a significant dent in her Olympic ambitions when she was not chosen as part of the Australian women’s water polo team. This was particularly hard to stomach when some of her teammates did make the cut. This did not put Keli off, however, and only served to fuel her ambitions to join the big league of sporting greats. Around this time, Lane also had a covert affair with an older man by whom she fell pregnant. She kept this pregnancy a secret, not only from friends and family, but also from Gillies who was still officially her boyfriend and knew nothing of the affair.

A pregnancy is not easy to conceal, especially for a sportswoman who spends considerable amounts of time in a swimming costume. Soon rumours started to circulate about Keli’s expanding waistline; however, some people just put it down to Lane gaining weight, so many dismissed the rumours as idle gossip. But not everyone was so easily misdirected. Les Kay, Lane’s head coach, had his suspicions but when asked why he had not talked to Lane about the possibility she was pregnant, he said that it was inappropriate for him to broach the subject.

On 18 March 1995 Lane gave birth at Balmain Hospital to daughter Tahlia. Almost unbelievably, earlier that same
day she and her team from Balmain Water Polo Club had played a match against Sydney University Water Polo Club, after which Lane had attended a post-match party before checking in to the hospital to give birth. Most people, even Duncan Gillies’ mother – an experienced nurse – had no idea Lane was even pregnant, let alone full-term. Lane even managed to keep it secret from a water polo team mate of hers, Stacey Gaylard, who was staying with the family at the time. This was astounding, as Gaylard was sharing Lane’s bedroom during Lane’s pregnancy. She immediately gave this child up for adoption and when she checked out she left the baby in the care of the hospital. Lane had been selected for the World Championships in Quebec in 1995, and it would seem that children did not fit with her sporting ambitions.

Later, at the coronial hearing, social worker Deborah Habib gave evidence saying that Lane was distraught and sad at giving up her child. Lane told Habib that being a mother would spoil her plans to participate in the Olympics. On 3 April 1995, as part of the formal adoption procedures Lane signed an affidavit (a voluntary sworn statement of fact) stating that Gillies was the baby’s father and was willing for the child to be adopted. Gillies still had no idea the baby even existed and he was not the biological father. Later Lane would sign another statement saying Gillies wanted nothing to do with the child and had refused to sign the consent forms required for the baby’s adoption to proceed. Unfortunately, no one checked with Gillies at this time, so the lies went unnoticed.

Lane’s life continued as if nothing had happened, and she had success at the World Championships, winning a silver medal for her country in the 1995 games in
Canada. Lane was now an elite water polo player at the international level and her golden girl status appeared to be already written in the sporting history books. Lane’s success continued, and in 1996 she was selected to play in the New South Wales women’s water polo team, which she thought would help her Olympic dream come true. She was also awarded a place at the Australian College of Physical Education. Gillies had by now bought a home in Gladesville, a Sydney suburb located 9 kilometres northwest of the central business district, so their time together was even more restricted as the couple now lived around 25 kilometres apart.

Just nine months after the birth of her first daughter, in December 1995, Lane fell pregnant again; the father has not been publicly identified. Lane was still just twenty years old. For her twenty-first birthday in April 1996, Lane’s parents threw Keli a big party. Rumors at this time suggested that Lane and Gillies, who now played football professionally, were no longer a couple. Possibly the relationship had broken down because, unlike Lane, Gillies had been honest about a sexual encounter he had had with another woman.

In 1996 Lane began working part time as a physical education teacher at the exclusive Ravenswood School for Girls on Sydney’s North Shore. She tried to also keep this latest pregnancy a secret, but she was visibly expanding and the students and parents soon noticed.

The students at school and their parents weren’t the only ones who had their suspicions – Lane’s water polo teammates also noticed Lane’s changing physique. Stacey Gaylard later recalled that at the Sydney International Aquatic Centre in Homebush in 1996 Lane wore a thick
tracksuit in 40°C heat, while everyone else dressed in summer clothes. When Lane removed the tracksuit and got in the pool her pregnancy was very obvious. Head coach Les Kay heard rumours that Lane was pregnant in 1996, but again he chose not to raise the subject with her. Lane’s teammates presumed, as did everyone else probably, that the baby was Gillies’. That is, everyone except Duncan himself, who did not know about this pregnancy either.

On 12 September 1996, after an induced labour, Keli gave birth to Tegan Lane at Auburn Hospital in Sydney’s west. It was a pregnancy and birth she kept secret from her family, friends and Gillies, who knew that Keli was taking contraceptives. Still only twenty-one years old, this was her second unplanned child, but would not be her last. On admittance, she lied to hospital staff, saying her family and partner (she again named Gillies as the father) were all away. She also told the staff that she had planned to have a homebirth, and that her midwife’s name was ‘Julie Melville’. This was not entirely a lie, as Julie Melville is a nurse but not a practising midwife, and was in fact Duncan Gillies’ mother, Melville being her professional name. Lane said the midwife could not be found, so she had checked in to hospital. This was a clever deception, as it meant that no records could be sourced by the hospital on admittance.

However, I find it strange that Lane would go to the great trouble of concocting so many lies, only to slip in part truths that could be checked if someone were to ever look. Also strange was that unlike most expectant mothers, Lane received no cards or flowers from well-wishers, nor had any visitors at all. She remained withdrawn and
did not really engage with the other expectant and new mothers around her.

It later transpired that Lane had needed to give birth that day, a Thursday, as she had a wedding to attend on the Saturday with Gillies, so they appear to have been reunited at this time. After both mother and baby were deemed healthy, Lane was discharged from hospital on Saturday 14 September, and was given the paperwork necessary to complete Tegan’s registration, including Medicare forms that she was compelled to complete before she left hospital. The rest of the paperwork she took with her, supposedly to post back at a later date, which of course Lane never did.

Around 12 noon, two days after giving birth, Lane and her newborn baby covertly left the maternity wing, possibly via the fire exit as none of the nursing staff saw them leave, without a carry basket or any other baby paraphernalia you would expect a new mother to carry. Lane left before two tasks were yet to be performed: first, baby Tegan had not been weighed; and second, the birth certificate had not been completed. Tegan therefore had no legal identity. But as some documents had been completed, the papertrail of Tegan’s life now existed.

By 3 pm Lane had arrived home, alone, self-possessed, and with no sign that anything momentous had happened. Duncan Gillies arrived and they both dressed for the wedding, an event Lane had been looking forward to, but there was at no point any sign or mention of a baby. Neither Gillies nor her family who saw her that afternoon noticed anything amiss about Lane, either emotionally or physically. An hour later they left for the wedding, but Lane seemed tired and not her normal self. She left the party unusually early.

On Monday 16 September, Lane rang the maternity ward at Auburn Hospital and told them that she wanted to cancel the standard home visit as she was going to have the necessary tests carried out by her homebirth midwife, Julie Melville. Lane now resumed her normal life, again as if nothing had happened.

Keli did not have a good year in 1997; she suffered a number of disappointments. First, she was not selected as part of the New South Wales women’s water polo team, and therefore couldn’t participate in the FINA World Cup, the world championships for aquatics sports including water polo. This would have been a massive blow for Lane. Also that year, water polo was selected as an Olympic event, which raised Lane’s hopes that she would be selected for the summer 2000 team. Apparently, these hopes were not dashed even when she was not invited to attend the official Olympic team announcement. Unsurprisingly to all except Lane, when the selections were released, her name was not among them. Duncan Gillies’ career was more successful. He had by this time played internationally against Fiji and Scotland, and in early 1998 ended his relationship with Lane for the last time. Lane’s Olympic dream took another knock in 1999 when she was not chosen at the trials in Noosa, south-east Queensland. She still did not let this deter her, though, still believing – unrealistically – that she had a chance of being selected to represent Australia at the Olympic Games the following year.