Two years on from her release from jail, Kathleen Folbigg hasn’t received a dime in compensation after she was wrongfully imprisoned for two decades for the deaths of her four children.
Earlier this month, the NSW Government offered her an ex-gratia payment of $2 million – a decision that has been widely condemned by legal and scientific experts. Kathleen described the offer as “insulting”.
“‘We hope this rebuilds your life, full stop, see you later,’ that’s basically how it reads,” Kathleen, 58, told 9News.
“What [the government has] done is offer an innocent person an amount that doesn’t justify all the suffering and everything else that happened.”
Kathleen served 20 years of a 25-year sentence for the murder of three of her children, Laura, Patrick and Sarah, along with the manslaughter of her first child, Caleb.
In 2023, the NSW Court of Criminal Appeal overturned her convictions on all charges after new genetic evidence suggested the children may have died of natural causes.
After campaigning for her conviction to be overturned for years, Kathleen thought her “fighting days” would be over once she received reparations.
She’d planned to buy a house in her hometown of Newcastle, NSW, repay her pro-bono legal team for years of work, and pay for mental healthcare. She now believes that dream is out of reach.
“We’re all exhausted and tired, but it looks like there’s one more fight just yet,” Kathleen added. “I’m honest enough to say mental healthcare is going to be needed for the rest of my life after this, and that is not free.”
Experts had previously estimated Kathleen could expect a compensation payout upwards of $10 million, due to her time served in jail, the loss of job security, psychological trauma and the associated stigma of being known for the alleged crimes.
NSW Premier Chris Minns has refused to budge on the figure. He said Kathleen was free to sue his government if she thought the payout was inadequate – a move Kathleen described as a “slap in the face”.
But the likelihood of a successful legal challenge isn’t guaranteed. Bob Moles, a Flinders University expert on wrongful convictions, said a legal challenge could be “very difficult”.
“Most of your money will be spent on legal fees with little chance of success,” he told the ABC.
“$2 million is abysmal, but the number of people who are wrongfully convicted and get nothing is significant. The system is rotten, and it doesn’t care about people who’ve been wrongly convicted.”
How does Kathleen Folbigg’s payout compare?
Lindy Chamberlain
Lindy Chamberlain was awarded $1.7 million in compensation after being wrongly sentenced to life imprisonment for the 1980 murder of her daughter Azaria.
In today’s terms, that would be around $4 million, allowing for inflation.
Having served three years in jail before her acquittal, Lindy was fully exonerated in 1988 after new evidence found the nine-week-old had been taken by a dingo during the family camping trip to Uluru.
David Eastman
After spending almost two decades in jail for a murder he didn’t commit, David Eastman was awarded $7.02 million in compensation.
David had received a life sentence for the 1989 shooting murder of federal police assistant commissioner Colin Winchester. He was released from jail in 2018 after a retrial found him not guilty.
He rejected a $3.8 million ‘act of grace’ payment from the ACT government and received more after a Supreme Court challenge.
Andrew Mallard
In 2009, Andrew Mallard received $3.25 million in compensation from the WA government after he was wrongfully convicted of murder.
Andrew was sentenced to 20 years in jail for the 1994 murder of Perth woman, Pamela Lawrence.
He served 12 years before a review of the original case found details of police misconduct and a lack of evidence connecting him to the crime. He was released in 2006.
