A woman killed her five-year-old stepdaughter by scalding her in a hot bath as a form of ‘punishment’ nearly half a century ago, a court heard.
Janice Nix, 67, has gone on trial for the manslaughter of Andrea Bernard in 1978 after the schoolgirl’s older brother Desmond contacted police to change his account of what he said happened.
He said Nix, who was only 19 at the time, used to beat and ‘punish’ the two children while their father, Desmond senior, was working or away.
He said this included Nix forcing them to have a cold bath ‘for something they had done wrong’, Isleworth Crown Court heard.
And he said both children were on the receiving end of ‘sustained beating’ in the run up to his sister’s death, after they were rude to her.
Prosecutor Kerry Broome told jurors: ‘This, say the Crown Prosecution Service, was the start of a cycle of violence which left the children terrified and in extreme fear and terror of Janice.
‘If the children did something Janice perceived as wrong, she would wait until their father was not around then would punish them.’
Ms Broome said: ‘The prosecution suggest this is demonstrating the use of baths at abnormal temperatures as an unusual and uncomfortable form of punishment for both children.’
Desmond was eight at the time his sister died in hospital, a month after she sustained ‘severe’ burns to half her body, including her legs, torso and back.
Janice Nix, at a previous court appearance, denies manslaughter and child cruelty
Nix initially told police she sent the children to each have a bath, and that Andrea later complained: ‘Mummy, my legs are itching.’
She said she took the girl to hospital, where she later died.
The court heard Nix moved into the Bernard family home in Thornton Heath, south London, with Desmond senior when he split up with his wife, Angela, the two children’s mother.
Jurors were told Nix then began beating the children, at least once or twice a week.
Desmond junior told police in 2022 this included being hit with a pot, being bitten by Nix, and being forced to eat cat food.
Ms Broome said: ‘The prosecution say these were serious, violent, cruel, degrading and unacceptable forms of punishment, even by the standards of the late 1970s.’
The beatings were so severe that Nix’s own mother told her to stop, while her brother said Nix was ‘horrible to the children’, the court heard.
Nix denies manslaughter, and one count of child cruelty relating to Desmond between 1975 and 1978.
Nix, 67, is accused over the death of her ‘step-daughter’ Andrea, five, in 1978, and the treatment of Andrea’s older brother Desmond
Jurors were told Nix’s defence is that Andrea’s scalding was ‘the result of a terrible, tragic accident’.
Opening the trial, prosecutor Ms Broome said: ‘The allegations in this case relate back quite some time now to the late 1970s, which culminated in the death of Andrea Bernard, who was aged five at the time of her death.
‘The defendant, then in her late teens, was in a relationship with – and living with – Andrea’s father.
‘Living in the same household were Andrea’s older brother, Desmond Bernard, aged seven to nine during the relevant period, and Andrea herself. The defendant was effectively their stepmother and was left in charge looking after them.
‘There is no dispute that on June 6 in 1978, Andrea was partially immersed in a scalding bath, and the injuries she sustained – the burns – caused her death some six weeks later as a result of the well-known conseuneces of the extensive burn injuries she sustained.
‘For the best part of half a century, her death – and her immersion in the scalding bath which led to it – was treated as an accident.
‘But in September 2022, Desmond, now a fully grown adult, contacted the police and provided an account which explained the defendant’s treatment of him and his sister Andrea was not how it seemed at the time.
‘That led to the events of the late 1970s involving the Bernard family being investigated by the police.’
She said the prosecution case was that in order to disclipline both Desmond and Andrea, that Nix ‘assaulted and ill-treated both of them in a way that went beyond reasonable chastisement of a child of his age, even by contemporary standards’.
She said the bath ‘punishment’ on June 6, when Andrea sustained her fatal injuries, was ‘probably as a result of some disobedience, but it was to force her into a scalding hot bath’.
She said Nix should not be judged by the standards of today.
Ms Broome said: ‘The prosecution’s case is based on other acts of far more severe ill-treatment which were not considered acceptable or reasonable as chastisement – back then, and they are not now.’
The court heard a one-day inquest was held into Andrea’s death, just a week after she succumbed to her injuries.
In it, it gave the cause of death as cardiact arrest, septicaemia, and burns.
It recorded a conclusion of accidental death, and was not investigated by police until four years ago when Desmond contacted them.
Nix, of Clapham in south London, denies both charges.
The trial continues.
