A police officers stands outside a house in New Malden, south London, on April 23, 2014 after three children were found dead at the house on the previous day. 42-year-old Tania Clarence was in custody after the bodies of a four-year-old girl and two three-year-old boys were found. Photo by CARL COURT/AFP/Getty Images
A police officers stands outside a house in New Malden, south London, on April 23, 2014 after three children were found dead at the house on the previous day. 42-year-old Tania Clarence was in custody after the bodies of a four-year-old girl and two three-year-old boys were found. Photo by CARL COURT/AFP/Getty Images
After stating that mental illness and instability was the only reason that Tania Clarence had smothered her children, Justice Sweeney sentenced Clarence to an indefinite detention in a psychiatric hospital.
“If you had not been suffering from mental illness at the time, you would not have killed your children,” Justice Sweeney said, quoting a psychologist.
“The prosecution accept that you loved all four of your children. Indeed, there is [a] substantial body of evidence that they were happy and well looked after and you were grief-stricken that Olivia, Max and Ben were destined to die early and before you,” said Justice Sweeney.
Tania Clarence pleaded not guilty to murder, but did accept a guilty plea to the lesser charge of manslaughter, citing diminished responsibility under the Mental Health Act as her defence.
Gary Clarence has notably supported his wife, saying that accusations claiming Tania Clarence had neglected the children had been “wholly unfounded”.
During the trial, the court heard details from the series of notes Tania Clarence left at the time of the murder.
She smothered the twin boys first, and then wrote a letter to her husband saying:
“Gary, I need to tell you how difficult it is for me to take Liv’s life… If I could take my own life and leave her to wait for you I would… My only solace is the pain and future suffering I am saving her from. I am so sorry… The only thing giving me the motivation to continue is the belief that the boys are already playing up in heaven like they could never play here.”
Tania Clarence has continually said that the children were experiencing undue and continual suffering. In 2012, she told medics that “if they were in South Africa they would go to the top of a mountain and die”.
Under Justice Sweeney’s orders, she will remain at the hospital indefinitely.
