Warning: Extremely distressing content.
A Perth father who set his three-year-old daughter alight and doused her seven-year-old autistic sister with petrol has been sentenced to 17 years in prison.
Edward John Herbert, 45, was found guilty of attempting to murder the children at their Doubleview home in August 2015.
A heavy marijuana and alcohol user, who had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, Herbert wrote a letter to Supreme Court Justice Lindy Jenkins claiming insanity, saying: “he had no idea his use of cannabis would affect his mental state.”
However, Justice Jenkins rejected the defence and handed him a lengthy custodial sentence.
“If he didn’t know, he really should have known the risk he was taking,” she said.
He is also subject to a lifetime restraining order preventing him from contacting his former partner and his children.
It is believed the three-year-old was sleeping in her cot when Herbert doused her in a flammable liquid and set her alight, causing life-threatening burns to 13 per cent of her body.
The court heard the child experienced life-changing disfigurements and now has problems with her vocal chords and her hearing.
The seven-year-old, who has autism, was dragged to safety by an off-duty policewoman, Stephanie Bochorsky, who heard a disturbance from her nearby home and ran into the house.
Fighting back tears, she told the court the three-year-old was standing up in her cot with “her whole head on fire.”
A third child, a six-year-old boy, escaped unharmed.
A family friend, Trevor Hayden, said outside court the sentence was not long enough.
“No sentence can account for what that man done to those children,” he said.
“She’s going to be scarred for the rest of her life… [It’s] not enough.”
Addressing Herbert, he added: “Burn in, rot in hell.”
