Janice Nix, 67, has been jailed for 12 years after forcing her five-year-old stepdaughter Andrea Bernard into a scalding hot bath at their home in south London in 1978
12:36, 19 Jun 2026 Updated 12:38, 19 Jun 2026
A step mum who killed a five-year-old girl by forcing her into a scalding hot bath almost five decades ago has been jailed for 12 years.
The death of Andrea Bernard was treated as an accident until her brother contacted police in 2022 with a new account of what happened.
Janice Nix, 67, was convicted of manslaughter as further horrific details of the crime came to light. She was today jailed for 12 years at Isleworth Crown Court for manslaughter.
Andrea died at the family home in Thornton Heath, south London, in 1978 after the tragic girl had pleaded the bath was "too hot, mummy".
A "furious" Nix had beaten and forced the youngster into the bath after she ignored instructions not to leave the house and to help clean instead, a court previously heard.
Andrea's brother, Desmond Bernard, said he could hear the five-year-old saying '"the bath is too hot mummy" while Janice shouted "get in the bath, get in the bath". He then heard screaming and splashing moments before the five-year-old's death on June 6, 1978.
Mr Bernard told jurors: "The screaming stopped and I could hear Janice calling Andrea to 'wake up, wake up'".
Asked by prosecutor Kerry Broome how Nix sounded, he replied: "She sounded scared." 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."
Mr Bernard, now 56, tearfully told jurors that he had initially described his sister's death as an accident because he wanted Nix to stop beating him. Andrea died nearly six weeks after arriving at hospital with burns to 50% of her body, the court heard.
Nix, then called Janice Thomas and 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.
She was arrested at Heathrow Airport on February 18, 2025, after arriving on a flight from Antigua, and was charged later that day. She had denied both the charges of manslaughter and cruelty to a child.
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In May, she wept in court as she was found guilty of her manslaughter, as well as cruelty to Andrea's brother Desmond Bernard between October 1975 and June 1978, when he was seven to nine-years-old.
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