A stepmother has been found guilty of killing a five-year-old girl by scalding her in a hot bath as a punishment almost half a century ago. Janice Nix, 67, was convicted of the manslaughter of Andrea Bernard, whom she forced into the bath in Thornton Heath, south London, in 1978.
Andrea’s death was initially treated as an accident until her older brother, Desmond Bernard, approached police in 2022 with a new account of the events, Isleworth Crown Court heard. Nix, from Clapham, south London, shook her head and wept in the dock as she was also found guilty of cruelty to Mr Bernard between October 1975 and June 1978, when he was aged seven to nine.
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. He said that Nix beat him with a belt, burned him with a cigarette, bit him and made him eat cat food. Mr Bernard described Nix as physically “strong” with a “heavy-set build”.
Jurors heard that on June 6 1978, Nix was “furious” after Andrea ignored instructions not to leave the house and to help clean instead. Nix shouted at Andrea in an “extremely loud” voice before beating her, the court heard. Mr Bernard said: “I could hear Janice shouting ‘get in the bath’ and I could hear Andrea saying ‘the bath is too hot mummy’. I could hear Janice shouting ‘get in the bath, get in the bath’ and then I heard screaming and splashing. Then I heard the screaming stopped and I could hear Janice calling Andrea to ‘wake up, wake up’.”
Mr Bernard said he then entered the bathroom and saw Nix cradling Andrea, who was “limp” and wrapped in a towel. Nix asked him to say it was an accident and that they were in the garden when it happened, and promised she would never beat him again. He lied to everyone because he did not feel protected and wanted the beatings to stop. Andrea died nearly six weeks after arriving at hospital with burns to 50% of her body.
A burns expert told the trial that a child exposed to water hot enough to cause Andrea’s injuries would instinctively try to get out by standing up, not remain seated, meaning Nix must have forcibly held parts of Andrea’s body underwater. During the 1978 inquest investigation, Nix had initially claimed Andrea took a bath on her own and later complained of itchy legs before fainting, but she admitted during her trial to giving a false account because she was “in a panic” over having failed to supervise Andrea.
