R -v- Jia Xin Teo
In the Crown Court at Warwick
25 October 2024
Before:
Mrs Justice Tipples DBE
Between:
R
-v-
Jia Xin Teo
Sentencing remarks
1. Baby Teo was born on the morning of Monday 4 March 2024 in a student bathroom at Coventry University. Apart from her mother, no one else knew of her existence. After only a few hours of life, baby Teo was dead and her infant body had been hidden in a suitcase.
2. Yesterday at this Crown Court you, Jia Xin Teo, were convicted unanimously by a jury of the murder of baby Teo. Today I have to sentence you for the murder of your child.
3. Murder is the most serious criminal offence and the sentence is fixed by law. There is only one sentence I can pass and it is life imprisonment. My job is to decide the shortest length of time you must stay in custody. This is called the minimum term. It is the Parole Board who then decide whether you can leave custody when that minimum term comes to an end. The Parole Board are a group of people who decide if it is safe for a person to leave custody. Their decision will depend on your behaviour in custody and whether it is safe for you to be released.
4. In order to decide the shortest length of time you must stay in custody I must consider the facts of the offence and what you did. I must also consider all that I know about you and what has happened in your life. I must sentence you on the basis of the jury’s verdict and I have reminded myself that I must be sure to the criminal standard as to the factual basis on which to pass sentence. I am grateful for the sentencing notes, which I have read with care, and the submissions of Counsel.
5. The fact of this case are awful and tragic.
6. You were born in Malaysia and that is where you grew up. Last summer in or around June 2023 you became pregnant. You were 21 years old and the father of your child was your boyfriend of three years. You were at the time studying marketing at the Malaysia University of Technology on a course which provided you with the opportunity to participate in an exchange programme with Coventry University starting in January 2024. That was a real opportunity for you and I am sure that your parents worked hard, so that you could take advantage of that opportunity and travel to England to study.
7. On 12 December 2023 your bought a return flight to England. I am sure that when you did so you knew that you were pregnant, and had known you were pregnant for some months. Your periods had stopped and you were wearing baggy clothes to disguise the inevitable changes to your body and to your appearance. You had not told anyone in Malaysia you were pregnant, and nobody knew you were pregnant. You gave no consideration to terminating the pregnancy or offering the baby for adoption. You did your best to convince yourself that you were not pregnant, as you could not face the reality of the situation.
8. You arrived in England on 9 January 2024, with a return flight to Malaysia booked for 17 May 2024. You joined a large group students, who you did not know before and made some new friends. You were, by then, seven months’ pregnant. Your started on your course at Coventry University and made friends with Eve, Desmond and Kum-Hoe (all of whom spoke your first language Mandarin). They had no idea you were pregnant and nobody at the University knew you were pregnant.
9. You did not seek any ante-natal support in relation to your pregnancy and did not seek any other medical advice. You had not made any preparations at all for the arrival of a baby into your life.
10. Your contractions started on Sunday 3 March 2024 and I am sure you knew that this is what they were and that you would at some point soon give birth to your child. You lied to your friends and told them that you were feeling unwell with a heavy period. The next morning you gave birth to your daughter alone, unaided on the bathroom floor of your student accommodation. I am sure this was before 11.30am.
11. The birth was not straightforward, but was complicated by significant blood loss. You were in considerable pain, weak and exhausted, and struggling to stand. I am also sure that giving birth in the way that you did was a highly traumatic and stressful experience. You have a history of depression and, when you gave birth, you suffered from an acute stress reaction. There is no dispute about that.
12. You baby was alive and well – a full-term healthy baby. But you did not want her. You cut the umbilical cord with a pair of scissors and the baby was alone with you in the bathroom, and she was soon crying. You texted your friend Eve to ask for “medication to replenish blood” and, just over an hour later, at 12.36 you sent Eve a selfie. Eve immediately saw that you were very unwell. You lied to her about what was happening, and continued to blame your ill-health on a period. Eve had no reason to think otherwise.
13. Your friends ordered you red bean soup which they took to your room around 2pm, and handed to you through the door. You would not let them in, but they could see you were crouched on the ground and looking very unhealthy. They were very worried about you. Eve got you more food and, when she returned to your room, she kept knocking on your door and you told her to go away. Eventually she was able to open the door, and she was shocked by the amount of blood she saw. You had shut yourself in the bathroom, were sitting on the floor against the door, the baby with you still alive. The water was running from the bathroom tap, which you had turned on to hide any sounds of the baby’s cries. You were shouting at Eve, asking why she was in your room, you were also crying, and sounding very distressed. You refused to come out of the bathroom so Eve could help you.
14. Eve was by then so worried that she told Pamela Bennett, the receptionist at the Halls of Residence, who immediately went to your room, where she could see blood everywhere. With the assistance of Eve translating, Pamela Bennett spoke to you and you told her that it was all the result of a period, you refused to come out of the bathroom, you told her to go away, and made it clear you did want to go to hospital. Pamela Bennett could also hear that you were very upset and very emotional.
15. The university staff called an ambulance and shortly after 3.45pm there were paramedics in your bedroom offering to assist you. You refused to come out of the bathroom or be treated by the ambulance staff. You told them that you did not want to go to hospital and after 4pm they left. Your baby was still alive at this point and on the bathroom floor. You wanted all the people who had come to help you out of your bedroom so that you could get rid of the baby and attempt to clean up the bathroom which, at that point, you had been unable to do.
16. Once the ambulance crew had left you murdered your child. You put her in a cornflakes box, which you then put in a sealable plastic bag, which you completely sealed up. You then put that bag into your suitcase, which you zipped up. You knew that, by sealing that plastic bag, your baby would certainly die and you thought that, by hiding her body in a cereal packet in your luggage, no one would ever find her body. You also made an effort to clean up the blood the bathroom, so that the situation did not look quite so bad. I am sure that your baby was alive for over four hours before you killed her.
17. When Eve came back to see you at around 6pm you were in bed, with the dead baby well and truly out of sight. The university staff made arrangements to move you to a new room and later that evening you set off for that new room, with the suitcase. You knew that you were very unwell and I am sure that it was only once you had hidden your baby that you were prepared to go to hospital, where you were admitted later that evening. You were immediately given a blood transfusion. The hospital doctors were unable to make any sense of the history you gave them and you consistently denied having given birth to a baby. However, following an intimate examination two days later on 6 March 2024 it was obvious that was what had happened. It was only when the police were called to the hospital that afternoon that you accepted you had had a baby, and told them were it was. You baby was found, where you had hidden her, dead in a suitcase.
18. Your baby died by asphyxiation. There were no other injuries to her body (other than small bruises which were the consequence of birth).
19. Miss Brand KC, your barrister, has argued in mitigation that the court cannot be sure that the killing was pre-planned and the court should give you the benefit of any doubt, and you should be dealt with as someone who formed the intention to murder following the birth, in desperation.
20. I do not agree that is the correct approach to the facts of this case. You did not act out of desperation. Rather, I am sure you decided to give birth all on your own as you were determined that no one should know you were pregnant, and no one should know you had had a baby. This was because you had decided that you were going to get rid of your baby as soon as she was born, and then no one would ever know you had had a baby. I am sure that was a decision you alone had taken many weeks before your baby was born. That was your plan, and it was a plan which you were determined to carry through. Only you know the reasons you decided upon this course of action. I am sure you did not want your family or friends to know about the baby, because you were scared what their reaction would be. You did not want to let your parents down or get into trouble with them as you were still a student, with the opportunity to study abroad, and that was an opportunity they had worked hard to give you. I accept, as Miss Brand KC pointed out, that your own cultural background may also have been relevant to your fears about how your family, friends and others would react to the knowledge of your unplanned pregnancy.
21. You were plainly very unwell after you had given birth, and you knew you were very unwell, and that is why you contacted Eve for medication. But because you were determined to get rid of the baby, you also knew that you could not get any help for yourself until you had hidden her body and attempted to clear up the mess in your room caused by the bleeding. I am sure that is why, when your baby was still alive, you shut yourself in the bathroom with her and sent away all those trying to help you, including the paramedics from the ambulance. That is because you knew that, as soon as any of them set foot in the bathroom, they would have found your baby alive, which was the very thing you did not want to happen. Once they had all gone, and left you alone, you killed your baby and hid her body, which is what you had planned to do. It was only having done so, that you agreed to go to hospital and get the medical help you needed because you had lost so much blood. It was then in hospital that your plan to get rid of your baby unravelled, as the doctors’ examination of your body revealed the truth of what had happened, and the fact you had had a baby was no longer a secret.
22. I have explained that the only sentence I can pass on you is life imprisonment and I have to set the minimum term that you must serve in custody before you are considered for release.
23. I must set the minimum term by reference to Schedule 21 of the Sentencing Code as Parliament has enacted. I judge this to be a case which falls within paragraph 5 of Schedule 21 and which means that the starting point is 15 years. That starting point reflects the seriousness of the offence. Having identified the starting point I have to take into account the aggravating and mitigating factors, to the extent I have not allowed for them in my choice of starting point.
24. Jia Xin Teo you are 22 and were born on 18 April 2002. You were 21 when you murdered your baby. You have no previous convictions or cautions. You are the youngest of four children, and your family all live in Malaysia. Your first language is Mandarin, and your English is poor.
25. There are two main aggravating factors. First, you were the baby’s mother, in a position of trust over her, with sole responsibly for caring and protecting her. She was a newborn baby and particularly vulnerable. Taken together, this is a powerful aggravating factor.
26. Second, this is a case where I am sure there was a significant degree of premeditation or planning. I am sure that many weeks before your baby was born you had decided you were going to get rid of her and it was to your advantage that, once you arrived in England, none of the other students at Coventry knew you or had met you before. The premeditation included the concealment of the baby’s body in a suitcase and is the reason why, when you were so unwell after the birth, you consistently lied about the cause of your ill-health to all those who tried to help you and sent them away.
27. In mitigation, I accept that at 21 you are a relatively young age and, together with your good character, these are mitigating factors which count in your favour.
28. I also take into account your mental health and I also have regard to paragraph 10(c) of Schedule 21 of the Sentencing Code, the Sentencing Council’s Guideline: Sentencing offenders with mental disorders, developmental disorders, or neurological impairments. I have also taken into account all the evidence I heard at trial from the two experienced consultant psychiatrists Dr John Croft and Dr Nicholas Kennedy. Given the psychiatric evidence before the court at trial, your barrister did not seek a further Pre-Sentence Report and I agree that would not have provided me with any further assistance in your case.
29. You had recurrent depression and have been diagnosed with mild depressive disorder. I am sure that, when you gave birth there was an acute exacerbation of that depression, and the psychiatrists diagnosed that you suffered an acute stress reaction. There is no doubt that you had a highly traumatic experience. However, I am sure that you were quite capable of taking decisions on 4 March 2024 which would have meant your baby was still alive today. You knew that all the people in your bedroom that afternoon were there to help you and were very concerned about you. I am sure that you deliberately chose not to open the bathroom door and let them help you so that they would not find out about your baby, and so that you could still kill her and hide her. I am sure that you understood full well what you were doing, and what the consequences would be.
30. I also taken into account to what Miss Brand KC has said in her sentencing note about the effect of this conviction and sentence will have on the rest of your life, on how you will be treated by others in prison, and the reaction society has to you now and in the future. What you did has changed your life for ever, and you will have to live with the consequence of what you did for the rest of your life. On top of that the prosecution accept that prison will be harder for you given that your family all live in Malaysia, the language difficulties, and the other circumstances Miss Brand KC has identified.
31. Weighing up all these factors I fix the minimum term which you will serve in custody at seventeen years. From that must be deducted the number of days you have already spent in custody which I am told is 230 days.
32. The Parole Board will then decide whether you can leave custody at that stage and, if so, on what terms. If you are refused parole at that time you will remain in custody, subject to regular reviews by the Parole Board. If and when you are released you will be on licence for the rest of your life. If you break the terms of your licence you will be liable to return to custody.
33. This is the case to which the victim surcharge applies. I make no other orders.
34. I have not been provided with any victim impact statements. However, I would like to extend the court’s condolences to baby Teo’s father and her grandparents.
35. I would also like to thank the police for their work on the investigation, all Counsel and solicitors involved, together with the court staff.
Mrs Justice Tipples DBE
25 October 2024