Floreat’s starving ballerina: Mother fails in bid for bail after arguing trial was ‘fundamentally miscarried’

The mother of Floreat’s so-called “starving ballerina” has failed in a bid for bail pending the outcome of her appeal after arguing she suffered a miscarriage of justice because she fell ill during her trial. The woman, who cannot be named to protect the identity of her daughter, and her husband were convicted in 2024 of neglecting their daughter, who was severely malnourished and infantilised. Their daughter, who was home-schooled, weighed just 28.1kg when she was hospitalised in 2021, days shy of her 17th birthday. Her mother, 48, was sentenced to five years’ jail while the father — who also admitted forging his daughter’s birth certificate — was given 6½ years behind bars in January. The mother has now made a failed bid to be released on bail as she waits for her appeal hearing, which is not likely to be held until March or April. She argued that her trial was “fundamentally miscarried” when District Court Judge Linda Black refused her application for an adjournment when she fell ill. Instead, the judge, who had been handed a doctor’s note that stated she was suffering from either food poisoning or a stomach bug, ruled the trial could proceed without her physically present in the courtroom, watching from a remote room on video link. In her reasons, Judge Black expressed concern the trial was looking at potentially running weeks over time and that the evidence-in-chief to be given by the witness in her absence was already well known to the woman and would require “minimal input” from her. About an hour into the witness’ evidence, the case was adjourned when the accused flagged she was struggling to follow the matter and was “kind of half dozing off”. The trial resumed the following day and the witness’ evidence-in-chief continued after the mother’s defence lawyer raised that she had been “asleep for a large part of the day, had vomited and at one point she had to leave the remote room to vomit”. “Defence counsel said that the appellant’s eyes were closed and that she was not following the evidence, and had been reported to look dazed and have little idea of what was going on,” the judgment said. But by the end of that day, the mother had “picked up enormously” and had been “writing things” was “awake and going well”, the judge noted. She returned two days later, after a weekend, appearing to have recovered. In ruling against granting bail, Court of Appeal Justice Robert Mazza said that he was unable to find that “the ground has such strong prospects of success as to amount to exceptional reasons for a grant of bail pending appeal”. “The fact that I have reached this conclusion at a relatively early stage in the appeal should not be understood to mean that the ground is without prospects of success,” he said. “It is true, as the appellant argues, that it is unusual, to say the least, for a criminal trial in a superior court to proceed in the physical absence of the accused. “Where this occurs without misconduct by the accused, it requires good reason. “After full argument before a coram of three judges, it may be that the ground is made out but, at the risk of repeating myself, on the basis of the arguments and analysis so far put to the court, I am unable to conclude that ground one has sufficient merit to justify a grant of bail pending appeal.”