![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/e29fe16623cc0f49f21e05cc2eeb7697.jpeg\")
<\/p>\nThe conduct of the judge who jailed the Perth parents accused of starving their daughter to the point of severe malnutrition amounted to a “miscarriage of justice”, WA’s Court of Appeal has found.<\/p>\n
The girl weighed just 28 kilograms when she was hospitalised in 2021 at the age of 17, after doctors warned her low weight put her at imminent risk of death.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The girl’s parents were found guilty, with her father sentenced to six-and-a-half years’ imprisonment and her mother to five years.\u00a0 (ABC News: David Weber\u00a0)<\/p>\n
Her parents, who cannot be identified, were found guilty in 2024 of engaging in conduct<\/a> which resulted in her suffering with her father sentenced to six-and-a-half years in jail and her mother to five years.<\/p>\n Her father was also found guilty of forging his daughter’s birth certificate.<\/p>\n The pair appealed their convictions and sentences<\/a> in 2025.\u00a0<\/p>\n In April, their convictions were set aside, and they were granted bail ahead of a retrial<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n ‘Unfair trial’<\/p>\n On Friday, the Court of Appeal published its reasons concluding the trial was “unfair”.<\/p>\n It said “regrettably” this was one of the rare cases in which the conduct of the judge amounted to a “miscarriage of justice” and offered several justifications for that ruling.<\/p>\n Firstly, the mother became unwell in the second week of the trial and was certified by a doctor as unfit to attend court for two days.<\/p>\n If you or anyone you know needs help:Lifeline<\/a> on 13 11 14Headspace<\/a> on 1800 650 890Kids Helpline<\/a> on 1800 551 800Beyond Blue<\/a> on 1300 22 46 36Butterfly Foundation<\/a> on 1800 334 673<\/p>\n However Judge Linda Black refused a request to adjourn proceedings and continued the trial with the mother in another room where she could not be seen by anyone in the courtroom other than the judge.<\/p>\n The “departure from [the mother’s] right to be present in court throughout her trial was not justified by any lawful exception, and, on its own, gave rise to a miscarriage of justice,” the judgment read.<\/p>\n Secondly, while each of the parents was giving evidence, Judge Black “repeatedly intervened or interrupted” which the court noted a “fair-minded observer” could conclude the judge viewed the parents as evasive, uncooperative or unreliable.<\/p>\n Those interventions were “such a departure from the due and orderly process of a fair trial as to amount to a miscarriage of justice.”<\/p>\n Additionally, the court ruled the judge “intervened” in the defence’s decision whether or not to call the daughter to give evidence at the trial. The girl ultimately did not testify.<\/p>\n A retrial is now expected to be called.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The conduct of the judge who jailed the Perth parents accused of starving their daughter to the point…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":746499,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[42523,289083,289089,43,123091,31880,44,289084,14666,86,359002,40450,289082,359001,289088,41,39,42,40,14665,45],"class_list":["post-746498","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-court-of-appeal","tag-daughter-starved-by-parents","tag-floreat-parents","tag-headlines","tag-linda-black","tag-malnutrition","tag-news","tag-perth-child-abuse","tag-perth-courts","tag-perth-news","tag-perth-parents","tag-starvation","tag-starvation-trial","tag-starving-ballerina-daughter","tag-starving-daughter","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-wa-courts","tag-wa-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/746498","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=746498"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/746498\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/746499"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=746498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=746498"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=746498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}