Chamberlain baby to be fostered

Press, 3 November 1984, Page 8

Chamberlain baby to be fostered

NZPA-AAP Darwin Lindy Chamberlain’s second daughter, Kahlia, has reportedly been given to foster parents. Her husband, the Seventhday Adventist Pastor, Michael Chamberlain, told his wife of his decision to give their daughter to foster parents at an emotioncharged meeting yesterday at Berrimah Prison, according to prison sources. Mrs Chamberlain carried Kahlia during the sevenweek trial for the murder of her nine-week old daughter, Azaria. Mr Chamberlain and a Gosford solicitor, Stuart Tipple, broke the news to Mrs Chamberlain during a regular visit. She was so distressed the visit had to be extended beyond the allotted halfhour period, according to the sources. “She has taken it very badly," one source said. The reasons for Mr

Chamberlain’s decision are not known. He slipped out of Darwin unnoticed late yesterday aboard a plane for Sydney and the Northern Territory Community Development Minister, who has responsibility for prisons, would not comment.

Legal custody of the couple’s two sons, Aiden and Reagan, fell to Mr Chamberlain in October, 1982, when a Northern Territory Supreme Court jury found his pregnant wife guilty of murdering the couple’s third child, Azaria, at Ayers Rock more than two years before.

Mrs Chamberlain was sentenced to a mandatory term of life imprisonment in Berrimah Prison while Mr Chamberlain, who was found guilty of being an accessory after the fact of the murder, was released on a three-year good-behaviour bond.

Mrs Chamberlain gave birth to Kahlia in Darwin

Hospital a fortnight after the jury brought down its verdict but the baby was taken away immediately after the birth in line with a decision by the Northern Territory Government not to allow her to keep the child in prison. However, mother and child were reunited in the maternity section of the hospital two days after the birth when Mrs Chamberlain was released on bail pending a Federal Court appeal. The reunion was shortlived. Mrs Chamberlain was ordered to return to Berrimah Prison When the appeal failed in May last year. Mr Chamberlain has had Kahlia and the two boys looked after by a nanny and friends since. He has taken the three children to visit their mother in prison a number of times but both he and his wife have told friends the visits have been traumatic for everyone.