A stepmother has been sentenced to 12 years in prison for killing a five-year-old girl by forcing her into a scalding hot bath as a punishment nearly five decades ago. Janice Nix, 67, was found guilty last month of the manslaughter of Andrea Bernard in Thornton Heath, south London, in 1978.
At Isleworth Crown Court on Friday, Mr Justice Nicholas Lavender handed down the sentence, stating that Nix had run the bath, knew the water was dangerously hot, and forced Andrea to enter it despite her protests. The judge emphasized that Nix heard the child's screams and that the risk should have been obvious to her.
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. Nix, a retired probation officer, was also sentenced for cruelty against Mr Bernard between October 1975 and June 1978, when he was between seven and nine years old.
In a victim impact statement read in court, Mr Bernard described the abuse he and his sister endured, including beatings with a belt and being forced to eat cat food, which he said led to Andrea's death and left him broken. He directly addressed Nix, accusing her of manipulating the family and taking away his sister's future.
Prosecutor Kerry Broome read a statement from Angela Bernard, the mother of Desmond and Andrea, who described the little girl as sweet and loving. The statement expressed that Andrea's death completely destroyed her and that she thinks about her every day.
On June 6, 1978, Nix, then known as Janice Thomas and in her late teens, was furious after Andrea ignored instructions to stay inside and help clean. The court heard that Nix shouted at Andrea in an extremely loud voice before beating her. Mr Bernard testified that he heard the bath running, Nix ordering Andrea to get in, and Andrea saying the bath was too hot. He then heard screaming and splashing before the screaming stopped and Nix called for Andrea to wake up.
Mr Bernard entered the bathroom to find Nix cradling a limp Andrea wrapped in a towel, with skin falling off her body. Nix asked him to claim it was an accident and to say they were in the garden when it happened. Andrea died nearly six weeks later in hospital, having suffered burns to 50% of her body.
A burns expert testified that a child exposed to such hot water would instinctively try to stand up, not remain seated, suggesting Nix forcibly held Andrea underwater. During the 1978 inquest, Nix initially claimed Andrea had taken a bath alone and fainted, but later admitted to lying out of panic. In a 2022 police interview, Nix gave a significantly different account, and also claimed the coroner had attributed the death to a faulty boiler, which was not mentioned in the report.
The year before the police investigation, Nix published a book titled Breaking Out, chronicling her transformation from a major drug dealer to an award-winning probation officer. She worked for the Probation Service between 2014 and 2019 and had previously served two substantial prison terms for drug offenses. Nix will serve two-thirds of her sentence before being eligible for release on license.
