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.”