Magistrate allows release of 34-year-old charged with 11 offences related to treatment of her baby daughter. A social media influencer who allegedly gave her baby multiple drugs to film her in “immense distress” in a plan to gain fame and money online has been granted bail by a Queensland magistrate.
On Wednesday morning, magistrate Stephen Courtney accepted the arguments of lawyer Mathew Cuskelly that any risk his 34-year-old client, who cannot be named for legal reasons, posed to her now 18-month-old daughter could be ameliorated by strict conditions.
The defence lawyer proposed that contact be limited to video calls with the 18-month-old and supervised visits with her other children, and that she have no contact with potential witnesses. Cuskelly had also argued on Tuesday that the case against his client was largely circumstantial and that its complexity meant it might be years before the Sunshine Coast mother faced trial.
She was not considered a risk of skipping bail nor suicide. On Tuesday, crown prosecutor Jack Scott alleged that the woman’s alleged manufacturing of symptoms in her child with a cocktail of drugs not prescribed for her daughter had caused her to have a cardiac arrest and concerned her doctors to the extent that they undertook what in hindsight was unnecessary and high risk brain surgeries to remove benign tumours.
