Accused hot tub killer denies hitting her step kids

An abusive stepmother accused of killing a five-year-old in a scalding hot bath wept as she denied ever hitting the children.

Janice Nix, now 67, allegedly meted out cruel punishments to daughter Andrea Bernard and then eight-year-old brother Desmond Bernard that went ‘beyond chastisement even by contemporary standards.’

Nix was 17 when she allegedly forced five-year-old Andrea into a bath at their home in Thornton Heath, south London, on June 6, 1978.

Andrea was said to have told Nix, ‘Mummy, the bath is too hot,’ and later died in a specialist burns unit having suffered ‘50 per cent full-thickness dermal burns’, Isleworth Crown Court has heard.

Nix sat down as she was cross-examined today, wearing a black coat over a white blouse. She was asked to face forward to the jury at all times and spoke calmly without emotion.

She accepted she had a criminal past but insisted that for the duration she lived in the house in Ashley Road, she had a full-time job as a telex operator for an import-export company.

But prosecuting, Jocelyn Ledward KC said: ‘I suggest you were not working at Blackwell Young & Co at the early part of 1978.

‘Isn’t it the case that you were expected to help in the house and help with the children, and that is why you repeatedly told police you were a housewife?’ To which Nix replied: ‘No.’

She said she ‘could not explain’ why she told police this, adding: ‘Bernard did the cleaning and the cooking. I couldn’t cook, I couldn’t do much of anything.’

Nix also struggled to explain why, despite her full-time job in the City, she came to be at home gardening on the Tuesday afternoon that Andrea sustained her horrific injuries.

Ms Ledward said: ‘Are you trying to distance yourself from what was really the full field of your responsibility in the house?’

Nix replied: ‘Not at all.’

Jurors were told Nix bit the finger of an off-duty police officer in 1978 and five years later became involved in shoplifting ‘with other people’

She insisted while living at Ashley Road, Thornton Heath, she did not commit further crimes, saying: ‘I stopped when I was living with him because I wanted to work.’

Nix insisted she was working full-time as a telex operator at the time of the offences.

She allegedly bit her stepson Desmond on his finger with enough force that it ‘drew blood’ because he had taken a bar of chocolate out of the fridge that belonged to her.

But giving evidence she denied ever hitting the children, adding that the only punishment handed out was when Bernard Senior ‘hid the toys’ from them, insisting there was ‘definitely no hitting.’

Asked if the children were ever naughty, Nix said: ‘They weren’t naughty children. Cheeky, yes, but not naughty.’

Asked if the children needed ‘disciplining from time to time’, Nix said yes, but insisted this would only involve telling them off.

She said: ‘Bernard would tell them off. When they were being rude, and by that I mean cheeky, Bernard would talk to them.

‘At no time at all did I ever see him hit them, and it’s not my place to hit them, it’s not my kids.’

She wept as she denied ever chastising the children, biting Desmond on the finger, hitting him on the head with a pot, burning him with a cigarette, or putting the children in a ‘shivering’ cold bath.

She also denied telling Desmond to lie after Andrea’s injuries after she was allegedly put in a hot bath, adding: ‘Our house was too busy, with kids running round in the vest.

‘Anybody at any given time would have seen bruising. As I said, Desmond is mixed race, any bruises would show up on Desmond.’

Nix accepted she would sometimes have to shout at the children, and when asked to demonstrate to the jury, she said loudly: ‘Desmond, go to your bed!’

She also told the court that the children called her ‘mummy’ the first time they met, saying: ‘I cannot say why they called me mum, but I never told them to call me mum.

‘In our culture, we respect our elders,’ she added.

Asked if she was hit as a child, Nix said: ‘When we did something naughty, if I was out of the house before mum and dad came home from work.’

She said she was only ever hit in the hand with a belt and described her mother as a ‘great talker’.

Asked how her mother would have reacted if she heard Nix had hit her children she said: ‘She would tell me off. She would remind me it was not how she dealt with me.

‘Later in the years, she would sit down and talk to me.’

Nix denies manslaughter and child cruelty to Desmond.