Stepmother jailed for 12 years over manslaughter of girl, 5 in scalding bath

A stepmother has been sentenced to 12 years in prison for the premeditated murder of a five-year-old girl, committed almost 50 years ago.

Janice Nix, 67, was sentenced at Isleworth Crown Court on Friday for scalding Andrea Bernard to death in a hot bath in Thornton Heath, south London, in 1978.

At the hearing, Andrea’s death was initially ruled an accident until her older brother Desmond Bernard gave a new statement to police in 2022.

Nix, a retired parole officer, was also convicted for the cruelty inflicted on Mr Bernard between October 1975 and June 1978, when he was between the ages of seven and nine.

Sentencing, Mr Justice Nicholas Lavender told the defendant: “I’m sure you started the bathroom, you knew how hot it was, you told Andrea to get in the bath and she said it was too hot but you either put her in the bath or made her go in.

“And you heard her screams,” the judge added.

“At least the risk should have been clear to you.”

Sitting in the dock in a white shirt, black blazer and pants, silver-haired Nix wept throughout much of the hearing and sobbed loudly as the judge read his remarks.

In a victim impact statement read out in court, Mr Bernard said the abuse he and his sister suffered – including being beaten with a belt and being forced to eat cat food – led to Andrea’s death and left him “broken”.

“The last memories I have of my sister’s life are the screams she made to survive and the lies about her death,” he said.

He then addressed Nix directly, saying: “You took away his future and changed mine forever.

“Your fake pain, your lies, your tears at Andrea’s funeral. You deceived my family because they couldn’t imagine the unimaginable.

“You saw their kindness as weakness and manipulated them to avoid detection.

“It’s time you accept what you did to Andrea and me.”

Prosecutor Kerry Broome read a statement from Desmond and Andrea’s mother, Angela Bernard, who described the little girl as “so sweet and loving”.

“His death completely destroyed me,” the statement said.

“He deserved to live a life, not lie in a cemetery. I think about him every day.”

On June 6, 1978, Nix became “enraged” after Andrea ignored instructions not to leave the house and instead help clean up.

The court heard that in her late teens, Nix, then known as Janice Thomas, was in a relationship with the children’s father, called Desmond Bernard, and was in fact their stepmother.

He shouted at Andrea in an “extremely loud” voice before beating her, the trial heard.

Mr. Bernard, who testified, told jurors he later heard the bathroom running.

He continued: “I could hear Janice yelling, ‘Get in the bathroom,’ and I could hear Andrea saying, ‘The bathroom is so hot, mommy.’

“I could hear Janice yelling, ‘Get in the bathroom, get in the bathroom,’ and then I heard screams and splashing.

“Then I heard the screaming stop and I could hear Janice calling out to Andrea, ‘wake up, wake up’.”

Mr Bernard said he then went into the bathroom and saw Nix embracing Andrea, who was “limp” and wrapped in a towel.

He added: “I could see his skin was falling off.”

Asked if Nix had said anything, Mr Bernard said: “He asked me to say it was an accident and that we were in the garden when it happened and that he would never beat me again.”

The court heard Andrea died from burns to 50% of her body about six weeks after arriving at hospital.

A burn specialist told the hearing that a child exposed to water hot enough to injure Andrea instinctively tried to stand up and get out rather than sit down.

Prosecutors argued this meant Nix was forcibly holding parts of Andrea’s body underwater.

During the 1978 inquest, Nix claimed Andrea initially bathed on her own and later complained of itching legs before collapsing, jurors heard.

However, during his trial he admitted giving the coroner false information about events because he was “in a panic” because he could not supervise Andrea while she was bathing.

The Metropolitan Police said that during a 2022 police interview, Nix described a version of events that differed “significantly” from his original statement at the time, but was not told that investigators had found it.

He also claimed that the coroner found that Andrea’s death was due to an overheated bathroom caused by a faulty accident; this was something not mentioned in the report.

A year before the police investigation was launched, Nix published a book about his life called Breaking Out, written with Elizabeth Sheppard.

In the book, Nix told the story of how he turned his life around from a big-time drug dealer nicknamed “Mama J” to an award-winning probation officer.

The defendant, who lives in Clapham, south London, worked for the Probation Service between 2014 and 2019 and won the Probation Service’s diversity and inclusion award in 2015.

The court was told he had previously served two “serious” prison sentences for drug offences.

He will serve two-thirds of his sentence before being released on licence.