Mum who stabbed eight children to death won’t stand trial
A mother who stabbed to death her seven children and a niece in northern Australia in 2014 will not stand trial for murder because she was suffering cannabis-induced schizophrenia when she lost control, according to a court judgment released on Thursday.
Raina Thaiday stabbed herself 35 times after killing the children, aged two to 14 years, at her home in Cairns on December 19, a month after her delusions began.
The Queensland state Mental Health Court ruled a month ago that Thaiday, 37 at the time, had been of “unsound mind” when the children were slain. State law kept the ruling from being made public until Thursday.
She will be held indefinitely in a high-security ward of a psychiatric hospital in the state capital Brisbane and will not be allowed to leave the hospital grounds unescorted.
“At the time of the killing, Mrs Thaiday was suffering from a mental illness, paranoid schizophrenia, and that she had no capacity to know what she was doing was wrong,” said the court findings of her psychiatrist.
“In fact, to her way of thinking at that time, what she was doing was the best thing she could do for her children; she was trying to save them.”
Thaiday, also known as Mersane Warria, had been smoking up to 20 cones of marijuana a day when she developed severe schizophrenia in late 2014, the court heard.
“I am the chosen one. I have the power to kill people and to curse people. You hurt my kids, I hurt them first. You stab my kids, I stab them first. If you kill them, I will kill them,” she is alleged to have been ranting in the street on the night of the murder.
Under Queensland state law if a person is found to be of unsound mind at the time of an offence, criminal proceedings against them are discontinued and they are considered unfit to stand trial.
Justice Jean Dalton said there was convincing evidence that Thaiday suffered a psychotic episode and had no capacity to control or understand her actions.
“Her children were the things that had given her the most happiness in life,” Dalton said.
Thaiday remained psychotic until July 2015 and has had two relapses, once at the two-year anniversary of the deaths, and has expressed a desire to kill her fellow patients, the court heard.
Several psychiatrists agreed her lifelong abuse of cannabis triggered her schizophrenia.
The house where the children died was demolished and replaced with eight trees in their honour.
Additional reporting by Agence France-Presse
