Mum who killed baby will get psychiatric treatment

A mainland woman who attempted suicide after strangling her infant daughter was yesterday sentenced by the Court of First Instance to an indefinite stay in a mental institution.

Lin Jun, 35, was also ordered to receive treatment for mental illness, including post-natal depression, at the Siu Lam Psychiatric Centre.

Lin pleaded guilty to infanticide, admitting she strangled her six-month-old girl, Chung Shi-ya, on March 22 last year out of feelings of frustration and helplessness. The baby was killed at their home on the Shek Lei Estate, Kwai Chung.

The court heard that Lin believed her child had become mentally disabled after an accident that had terrified her, but no details were given.

Lin also blamed herself for being an incompetent mother because she thought her daughter was smaller than other babies of her age.

Lin had planned to kill herself by leaping off Kwai Tsing Bridge, and was on the point of doing so when a patrolling police officer noticed her and intervened, the court was told.

The incident followed Lin's decision to forgo treatment for her depression because it was too expensive, the court heard.

'I agree with your counsel that this is a tragic case. You would not have done what happened but for the fact that you are suffering from mental illness,' Mrs Justice Judianna Barnes Wai-ling said.

'I myself am a mother. I can fully appreciate what one must feel when she killed her child. I can feel your guilt and remorse,' Barnes said.

In a suicide note to her husband, she said she could not 'let the retarded baby ruin [her husband's] life'. Lin wrote that she did not have the 'slightest survival ability'.

Barnes said the Mental Health Review Tribunal would review her condition after a year.