Stepmother jailed for manslaughter of girl in scalding bath in 1978
67 year old Janice Nix has been jailed for 12 years.
Last updated 19th Jun 2026
A stepmother has been sentenced to 12 years behind bars for killing a five-year-old girl by scalding her in a hot bath as a punishment nearly half a century ago.
Janice Nix, 67, was found guilty last month 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, the trial at Isleworth Crown Court previously heard.
Nix was also convicted of cruelty to Mr Bernard between October 1975 and June 1978, when he was seven to nine-years-old.
"The bath is too hot mummy"
The trial previously heard that on June 6 1978, Nix was “furious” after Andrea ignored instructions not to leave the house and to help clean instead.
Nix shouted at Andrea in an “extremely loud” voice before beating her, the court heard.
Mr Bernard, giving evidence, told jurors he later heard the bath running.
He went on: “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 he then entered the bathroom and saw Nix cradling Andrea, who was “limp” and wrapped in a towel.
He added: “I could see skin falling off her.”
Asked whether Nix said anything, Mr Bernard replied: “She asked me to say it was an accident… and to say that we were in the garden when it happened and that she would never beat me again.”
Asked what he did, he said: “I lied, I told everyone that story.”
Asked why, Mr Bernard replied: “Because I didn’t feel protected, I just wanted it to stop.”
He told jurors he lived in “constant fear” of Nix’s beatings and did not tell anyone because he feared being “punished more”.
Speaking about why he decided to tell others about his sister’s death, Mr Bernard said: “I couldn’t carry on dealing with it, so that’s what I did.”
He added: “To place this burden where it should go.”
Died in hospital
Andrea died nearly six weeks after arriving at hospital with burns to 50% of her body, the court heard.
A burns expert told the trial that a child exposed to water hot enough to cause Andrea’s injuries would instinctively try to get out by standing up, not remain seated.
Prosecutors argued this meant Nix must have forcibly held parts of Andrea’s body underwater.
Nix, then called Janice Thomas, 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.
During the 1978 inquest investigation, Nix had initially claimed Andrea took a bath on her own and later complained of itchy legs before fainting, jurors heard.
But she admitted during her trial to giving a false account of the events to the coroner because 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,” she told jurors.
“I was young and I was clearly not thinking. On hindsight now, I see my negligence as a teenager.”
The defendant further told the court she did not at the time realise the bathwater was scalding hot, adding: “All I know is that she was in distress, her legs were red, they had bubbles on them… I didn’t know how hot the water was.”
During a 2022 police interview, Nix gave a version of events that differed “significantly” from her original statement from the time, having not been told that investigators had found it, the Metropolitan Police said.
She also claimed that the coroner found Andrea’s death was because of an overheated bath caused by a faulty boiler — something not mentioned in the report.
Nix was arrested at Heathrow Airport on February 18 2025 after arriving on a flight from Antigua, and was charged later that day.