A fresh inquest into the death of a five-year-old girl who was fatally scalded in a dangerously hot bath at home nearly 50 years ago is set to be opened.
Earlier this year, Janice Nix was jailed for 12 years for the manslaughter of her stepdaughter, Andrea Bernard, who suffered horrific burns over half her body from a bath she was forced into at her family home in Thornton Heath, south London.
However, in 1978 a coroner recorded a verdict of accidental death, with the truth only emerging half a century later.
On Sunday, September 11, 2022, Desmond Bernard walked into Croydon Police station and asked to speak to an officer. He said he had information about his little sister’s death more than 40 years earlier.
Back in 1978, Desmond, who was just eight years old, had backed up his stepmother’s version of events.
Nix, 68, of Clapham, who was 19 at the time, claimed she had been outside with Desmond, and Andrea had been in the bathroom alone.
But what Desmond was to tell police now, detectives would later admit, was ‘chilling’.
Nix, he said, was regularly violent to the children. She would beat them, hit them with belts, once stubbed a cigarette out on Desmond’s body, and forced him to eat cat food.
Andrea Bernard, five, pictured the Christmas before she was fatally scalded in a hot bath by her stepmother
Janice Nix, 67, presented herself in court as a reformed character, having served lengthy jail terms for drugs offences. But she was convicted by jurors
These, he said, were ‘punishments’, meted out on the children to discipline them or as chastisement for what their new stepmother had deemed poor behaviour.
On that fateful day in June, Andrea had been reluctant to return home after school as she feared Nix would be angry at her for not having stayed at home to clean.
Andrea’s brother said he heard Nix, who also subjected them to extremely cold baths, run a scalding hot bath and call for Andrea to get in.
Desmond told police he knew this, because rather than being outside, he was actually in his bedroom next door to the bathroom, and heard his little sister screaming: ‘Mummy, it’s hot, it’s hot.’
He remembered entering the bathroom to find Nix holding his sister’s limp body, with skin already peeling off her legs.
But this account was kept quiet at the time, because Nix had promised Desmond she would no longer beat him if he stuck rigidly to her story that Andrea was in the bathroom alone.
And keep quiet, Desmond did. Right up until 2021, when Nix released a memoir called ‘Breaking Out’ in which she detailed how she went from being a drug dealer to an award-winning probation officer, winning the Probation Service’s diversity and engagement award in 2015.
It proved an unwitting trigger in finally securing justice for Andrea, as in June this year, Nix was convicted of manslaughter and jailed for 12 years at Isleworth Crown Court.
At the criminal trial, a new pathologist said the infection was caused by the burns, that the injury pattern was inconsistent with an accident and that the likely water temperature was capable of causing burns within seconds.
The conviction led to an application for a quashing of the original inquest verdict and the High Court has now ordered that a fresh inquiry into the death take place.
The case went to the High Court this week after an application by the senior coroner for West Sussex, Brighton and Hove, Penelope Schofield, to quash the 1978 inquest, which recorded a verdict of accidental death, and hold another.
Giving judgment, Lord Justice Singh said it is in the ‘interests of justice’ for a new inquest to take place and the true circumstances of Andrea’s death to be investigated and recorded.
Lord Justice Singh, who considered the case with Lord Justice Fordham, said Andrea’s surviving family had been informed about the application and supported it.
‘The single question is whether the interests of justice make a further inquest either necessary or desirable,’ he said in his judgment.
‘In light of recent developments, in particular the conviction of Janet Nix for the manslaughter of Andrea, we have reached the conclusion that it is in the interests of justice that the inquest in 1978 be quashed and a new inquest held.
‘The conviction has direct relevance as to how Andrea died and it is necessary and desirable for a new inquest to be held.’
Nix sought to cover her face as she appeared before the magistrates’ court after being charged over Andrea’s death
Recalling the fatal day, Desmond said: ‘As soon as we got through that door, Janice started shouting, beating Andrea… she was furious.’
He said he went up to his room where he heard his sister’s haunting pleas for mercy from the bathroom.
Desmond said: ‘I could hear her (Janice) shouting and slapping, and Andrea, of course, screaming and crying.
‘Next thing I remember is the bath was running… I could hear footsteps back and forth.
‘I could hear shouting from the bathroom. I could hear Janice shouting: “Get in the bath.”
‘And I could hear Andrea saying: “The bath is too hot, mummy.”
He said this lasted a ‘couple of minutes’, after which he said: ‘Then I heard the screaming stopping. I could hear Janice telling Andrea to wake up.’
The police briefly investigated on behalf of the coroner, but, having shown what appears to be only a cursory interest in the death of a young, black girl, accepted what Janice – and Desmond – had to say about it.
‘She asked me to say it was an accident,’ Desmond would later say in court.
‘To say that we were in the garden when it happened, and that she would never beat me again.
‘I lied, I told everyone that story.’
Indeed, police officers, friends, hospital staff and Andrea’s biological parents were all told Janice was in the garden when Andrea took a bath alone.
Asked years later why he covered for his tormentor-in-chief, Desmond said: ‘I didn’t feel protected, I just wanted it to stop, and that was the only way I thought I could stop it.’
