Kathleen Folbigg, who was once described as “Australia’s worst mother,” has been awarded an A$2m (£975,580, $1.3m) payout for 20 years of wrongful imprisonment.
According to The Guardian, Flobigg was offered an “unfair” and “insulting” $2.2 million in compensation after spending two decades in prison during the inquiry that later found her wrongfully convicted of killing her four children.
The 58-year-old Australian woman was sentenced to a minimum of 25 years in jail after getting wrongfully convicted in 2003 for the suffocation murders of three of her infant children and the manslaughter of the fourth.
The compensation after 20 years of imprisonment was dubbed as “profoundly unfair and unjust” by her lawyers.
In a statement on Thursday, August 7, 2025, Folbigg’s lawyer, Rhanee Rego, said, “(The sum) was a moral affront – woefully inadequate and ethically indefensible. The system has failed Kathleen Folbigg once again. Kathleen lost her four children; she lost 20 of the best years of her life; and she continues to feel the lasting effects of this ongoing trauma.”
“The payment does not reflect the extent of the pain and suffering Kathleen has endured. This should be about the system recognising the significance of what it did to her,” she added.
Flobigg's name was cleared in 2023 after the appeal court cancelled her convictions months after she got a full pardon and was released from the prison after new science proved that her kids might have died naturally or because of a genetic problem.
