Baby sacrificed to stop 'evil Jackal'

A Remuera woman who put her baby in the fire was offering the child as a sacrifice to save the world, a High Court jury heard yesterday.

The 29-year-old mother, represented by Paul Trehey, has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to a charge of attempted murder, a plea accepted by the Crown.

It was not disputed that the woman, who has name suppression, placed her 4-month-old daughter in the fire on June 20.

Psychiatrists agreed she was legally insane at the time, but Mr Trehey said it was right for their views to be scrutinised by a jury.

In his opening address in the High Court at Auckland, prosecutor Kieran Raftery told the jury: "She was offering a sacrifice to save the world ... That is what she believed at the time."

She thought that evil forces, namely the Jackal, threatened her family and the world.

"The way she saw to stop that was to offer her child as a sacrifice."

Mr Raftery said the woman knew what she was doing but did not know it was morally wrong.

In her distorted mind she believed she was sacrificing the baby for the greater good of mankind, to save her from the Jackal, who was the devil in disguise.

Mr Raftery said while psychiatrists for the defence and prosecution agreed about the woman's mental state, criminal trials were dealt with by jurors, not psychiatrists.

"It may well be that at the end of the day you have no difficulty in agreeing with the psychiatrists as well," he said.

This was not one of those cases where there was public outrage about a criminal lunatic at large.

This was someone who had broken down in a sad and tragic way.

Mr Raftery said the woman's mother heard the baby's screams and rushed to the room, pulled the infant from the fire and put her in a sink of cold water until an ambulance arrived.

The child was recovering but still suffered from the burns on her back.

But for the grandmother's intervention, the baby would have burned to death.

In her statement, the woman told Detective Wendy Pickering that she thought there was a "terrible game happening" and she felt she was being commanded.

"I know I put baby on the coals. I thought it was the only way to save the world. I thought my baby was Jesus, my mum was God.

"I thought I had to save the world by sacrificing my baby."

Dr Alexander Simpson, the director of regional forensic psychiatric services, told the court that the woman suffered from an acute psychiatric illness.

She believed she was part of the battle between good and evil, and felt she carried the burden of protecting the world from the Jackal.

The youngest member of every family had to be sacrificed to prevent the Jackal's attack.

Dr Simpson said the woman was a good and loving mother. The only explanation for what happened was her mental illness.

Her behaviour was delusionally motivated and she was unable to recognise the moral wrongfulness of her actions, said Dr Simpson.

The trial, before Justice John Laurenson, is expected to end today.