Stepmother killed girl in scalding bath

A STEPMOTHER killed a five-year-old girl by scalding her in a hot bath as a punishment nearly half a century ago, jurors found.

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Janice Nix, 67, was found guilty of the manslaughter of Andrea Bernard by forcing her into the bath in Thornton Heath, south London, in 1978.

Andrea's death was treated as an accident until her older brother Desmond Bernard went to police in 2022 with a new account of what happened, Isleworth Crown Court heard.

Nix, of Clapham, London, wept in the dock as she was also convicted of cruelty to Mr Bernard between October 1975 and June 1978, when he was seven to nine-years-old.

Giving evidence during the trial, Mr Bernard, now 56, tearfully told jurors that he had initially described his sister's death as an accident because he wanted Nix to stop beating him.