Former TV presenter Esther Arunga has been sentenced to 10 months over her son’s murder in Australia, but immediately freed on parole.
Arunga was sentenced this morning (18.07.19) after pleading guilty to lying to police on circumstances that led to her three-year-old son’s death.
According to the Australian Associated Press, Ms Arunga who is a trained lawyer was arraigned in a Supreme Court in Brisbane was sentenced to 10 months in prison by Justice Martin Burns.
Her husband Quincy Timberlake is already facing a murder charge in which she is also charged as an accessory.
The news agency reported that the 38-year-old was convicted of being an accessory after the fact to the manslaughter of Sinclair Timberlake, who suffered fatal injuries at his family home at Kallangur, north of Brisbane, in June 2014.
As reported by The Sauce, she had earlier told medics and prosecutors that her son fell from the staircase, but later changed the version to implicate her husband who punched the boy’s stomach several times.
An autopsy later revealed that the cause of death was “as a result of severe blunt force such as punching or stamping or similar”, which was not consistent with a fall.
Crown Prosecutor Danny Boyle said that although Ms Arunga had not interfered with evidence, she had played a part in delaying the investigations and the arrest of the suspect.
Ms Arunga legal team told the court she had made a “voluntary correction” to police and her deception was due to “cultural factors” and attempts to protect her husband’s mental health.
This article was first published by Capital News.