A mother who survived being lit on fire in an attack that killed her mother and son has spoken out about her desire for justice after the man behind it never faced trial.
Natalie Sands had her world destroyed early one morning in October 2019 when her father burst into her room at her parent’s Tamworth home, frantically pouring petrol from a jerry can before pulling out a lighter.
Fighting to save herself and her sleeping sons, Ms Sands struggled with her father, pushing him into the hallway as she tried to stop him from setting her and the home on fire.
“I was screaming at him ‘Dad, don’t do this, I’ve got two beautiful kids in that room,’, and he just didn’t want to stop,” she said on 60 Minutes.
She blew out the lighter five times before he managed to follow through with his plan.
“The sixth time he lit it, as soon as he lit it, he pushed it into my chest and that was it,” she said.
“It just went whoosh and the whole house ignited.”
Her eldest son, then just seven years old, called out to her before she told him to run for his life as she battled to survive.
“I was walking up this hallway and I was watching my hands like this and my hands were burning, they were melting in front of me,” she said.
While still on fire, she fought to save her youngest son, five-year-old Orlando, who was still asleep in his room.
“I went into the bedroom and I tried to close the door to give myself time, but this big ball of flames came up the top of the door,” she said.
“I looked over to the left and I seen him laying there and I just thought, if I grab him, I’m going to burn him and it was just happening so fast.”
She leapt from a window to stem the flames on the ground outside but was left unable to get back inside.
“I didn’t realise how badly burned I was, I didn’t realise how high the window was, I was just trying to get back in that room,” she said.
“I can see him, I can see him on the bed, laying there, fast asleep…and it was just like a wave on the beach, but it was a wave of fire.”
Ms Sands said she had to “accept that there was nothing” she could do, before taking her eldest son to look for help.
After the attack, doctors did not know if they could save Ms Sands after she suffered “full thickness burns” to 80 per cent of her body.
However, she says the physical and mental scars will not hold her back from pushing for justice,
“I look at myself, I‘m just like, ‘You’re gonna go through all that, all that fighting just to give up?’,” she said.
“No, I don‘t carry these scars for no reason.”
The Supreme Court accepted her father had suffered a psychotic episode when he attacked his family, he has been diagnosed with a neurodegenerative disease and depressive disorder.
He was found not criminally responsible for the deaths of his wife and grandson and was sent to a mental health facility.
“The day that the hearing went ahead was the day I realised that‘s it. He’s won,” she said.
“That’s what it felt like, that he‘d gotten away with murder.”
Former Supreme Court Judge Anthony Whealy, who did not rule on the case, said that he had “enormous sympathy” for Ms Sands but stressed the importance of acknowledging mental illness when dealing with traumatic events in court.
“The legal test is that they either do not understand the nature and the quality of their act, or if they do know what they’re doing, that they do not appreciate it’s morally wrong,” he said.
“But from the point of the view of the victim, they can’t see the difference because they’ve lost someone dear to them and in the most horrendous possible manner, and they cannot accept, in most cases, the forensic justice system at all.”
With her father now allowed out of the facility on day release, Ms Sands said the decision left her feeling like she‘d been denied justice.
“If someone is that mental, that they’ve gone and slaughtered their own family, then why are you letting them out into the street, back into the community?” she said.
However, Mr Whealy sees it differently, with Ms Sands‘s father now seen as psychiatrically rehabilitated and not a danger to himself or the community.
“What else could we do? Put the person to death who committed the crime when they’re insane and not responsible for their actions?” he asked.
“…so, this is a problem that can’t be resolved no matter how much sympathy we feel for the victim.”