Magistrate Cries Over Threat to Chop up Boys

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Magistrate cries over threat to chop up boys AAP

August 12, 2004

A magistrate was today reduced to tears as she heard a woman had threatened to chop up two little boys after allegedly snatching them from the front yard of a Brisbane home.

Jodi Ann Lawler, 21, faced Brisbane Magistrates Court over yesterday’s alleged abduction of the boys, aged three and five, and the attempted kidnapping of a their playmate, also aged five, from the yard at Keperra in Brisbane’s north-west. Magistrate Christine Roney cried after hearing Lawler enticed the children into her car with chocolate before driving two of them 20km across town to her ex-boyfriend’s house at Darra on the city’s southside. “It is difficult to imagine a category of case that is more serious,” Ms Roney told Lawler. Police prosecutor Lyne Asher told the court Lawler, who suffers drug-induced psychosis linked to anorexia and an amphetamines addiction, had told the boys they would be chopped up. Sgt Asher said she had ordered them into a cage, but they ignored the demands and were allowed to watch television during the 50-minute ordeal, which ended when Lawler’s ex- boyfriend Wayne Oldfield, 27, arrived home and alerted police. Defence lawyer Jim Coburn told the court the children were used as “pawns” by Lawler, who told her estranged lover they belonged to him and she was pregnant with his third child. Ms Roney refused to grant bail to Lawler despite assurances from Mr Coburn that she was deeply apologetic towards the boys’ parents and had limited memory of the events. “She freely admits the circumstances are bizarre,” Mr Coburn told the court. He argued for Lawler to be set free while she awaited a hearing so that she could continue medical treatment for her condition in Royal Brisbane Hospital, where she was an outpatient. However, Ms Roney found Lawler was a risk if allowed back into the community. Lawler sat quietly throughout most of the hearing but spoke up at one point to ask if she was being charged. Her mother refused to comment outside court despite watching from the back row of the public gallery. Outside the hearing, Mr Coburn called on mental health authorities to become involved. Lawler faces two counts each of abducting a child under the age of 16, which carry a maximum seven-year jail term under Queensland laws. She also faces a charge of attempted abduction, three of threatening violence, and two each of deprivation of liberty and common assault. Lawler is yet to enter a plea to the charges and will face court again on August 26. Meanwhile, she pleaded guilty today and was fined $400 for failing to appear in court last month on 13 unrelated charges, including serious assault, stealing and being a public nuisance.