Stepmother guilty of killing five-year-old girl in scalding bath in 1978

A stepmother killed a five-year-old girl by scalding her in a hot bath as a punishment, jurors have found.

Warning: This article contains details you might find distressing

Janice Nix, 67, was found guilty on Tuesday of the manslaughter of Andrea Bernard by forcing her into the bath in Thornton Heath, south London, in 1978.

Andrea's death was treated as an accident until her older brother Desmond Bernard went to police in 2022 with a new account of what happened, Isleworth Crown Court heard.

Nix, from Clapham, was also convicted of cruelty to Mr Bernard between October 1975 and June 1978, when he was seven to nine years old.

Mr Bernard, 56, tearfully told the trial he initially described his sister's death as an accident because he wanted Nix to stop beating him with a belt. He said she also burned him with a cigarette, bit him and made him eat cat food.

He added that Nix, whom he described as physically "strong" with a "heavy-set build", regularly beat the siblings, even for not folding their clothes "to her standards".

'Skin falling off after scalding hot bath'

Jurors heard that on 6 June 1978, Nix was "furious", shouted at Andrea and beat her after she ignored instructions not to leave the house and to help clean instead.

Mr Bernard said he later heard the bath running. He added: "I could hear Janice shouting 'get in the bath' and I could hear Andrea saying 'the bath is too hot mummy'.

"I could hear Janice shouting 'get in the bath, get in the bath' and then I heard screaming and splashing.

"Then I heard the screaming stopped and I could hear Janice calling Andrea to 'wake up, wake up'."

Mr Bernard said when he entered the bathroom, he saw Nix cradling his sister, who was "limp" and wrapped in a towel. "I could see skin falling off her," he said.

Andrea died nearly six weeks after being taken to hospital with burns to 50% of her body, the court heard.

A burns expert said a child exposed to water hot enough to cause Andrea's injuries would instinctively try to get out by standing up, with the prosecution arguing that Nix must have forcibly held parts of her body underwater.

Nix, then called Janice Thomas, and in her late teenage years, had been in a relationship with the children's father, also named Desmond Bernard, and was in effect their stepmother, the court heard.

'Constant fear' of Nix's beatings

Mr Bernard told jurors Nix asked him to say it was an accident that happened in the garden and that she would never beat him again. He complied with the lie and lived in "constant fear" of Nix's beatings.

Speaking about why he decided to tell others about his sister's death, he said: "I couldn't carry on dealing with it, so that's what I did. To place the burden where it should go."

During the 1978 inquest, Nix initially claimed Andrea took a bath on her own and complained of itchy legs before fainting, but she admitted during her trial that this account was false, saying she was "in a panic" over having failed to supervise Andrea while she took a bath.

"I realised I had done something I shouldn't have done: I should have been with Andrea," Nix told jurors. "I was young and I was clearly not thinking. On hindsight now, I see my negligence as a teenager."

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Nix was arrested at Heathrow Airport on February 18, 2025, after arriving on a flight from Antigua, and was charged later that day. She had denied both the charges of manslaughter and cruelty to a child.

Aisling Hosein of the Crown Prosecution Service said Nix was only prosecuted because Mr Bernard reported Nix's actions to police in September 2022, resulting in the circumstances of what happened that day to be re-examined.

"I can only imagine the enormous courage this must have taken to come forward after being told as a child to say the incident was just an accident," Ms Hosein said.

"It is thanks to him that we have been able to secure justice today on behalf of Andrea almost five decades on."

Nix was remanded in custody to be sentenced at a later date.

(c) Sky News 2026: Stepmother guilty of killing five-year-old girl in scalding bath in 1978