WA woman narrowly avoids jail after giving birth in secret and hiding baby’s body

Warning: This article contains distressing content.

A West Australian woman narrowly avoided jail on Friday for concealing a corpse after her newborn baby was discovered wrapped in a garbage bag in her freezer.

Monique Ellen Burton, 35, appeared in Perth District Court, where she also pleaded guilty to a raft of fraud charges related to money she received in donations via a GoFundMe page.

Shocking details of how the woman, from Geraldton in WA’s Mid West, concealed her sixth pregnancy from her partner, faking a negative pregnancy test and later giving birth in secret on the couple’s lounge, were aired in court on Thursday ahead of her sentencing.

Burton told police she had little recollection of the night she birthed a 4.2 kilogram boy, known as Baby Burton, in late 2021, who she later placed into a garbage bag and left behind the sofa.

It was her partner of 14 years, Shaun Balaam, who later admitted to finding the dead baby and placing it into a chest freezer.

Authorities were unable to determine if the baby was stillborn.

On Friday, Perth District Court Judge Darren Renton said the case was “tragic … on many levels”, adding that there were “layers of complexity”.

He told Burton she had “maintained lies” about medical conditions, being pregnant and giving birth, but said her interference with the baby’s body was “not sophisticated” and not meant to be permanent.

“It was naive,” he said.

“An ‘out of sight, out of mind’ act.”

While Renton said Burton’s behaviour was towards “the lower end” of the scale of criminal culpability, he said what she did “involved a degree of indignity towards Baby Burton”.

The court was told Burton had five children with Balaam over the course of their relationship.

Four of her pregnancies were concealed from authorities, the court was told, and her third child was also concealed from Balaam, the baby’s father. The court heard Burton told Balaam in 2019 she was suffering from a liver condition that caused bloating to explain pregnancy symptoms.

After birthing the couple’s third baby, the court was told she placed her in a bin and “abandoned her on the front porch of a neighbour”.

An off-duty nurse found the abandoned baby and reported it to the authorities, after which Burton presented to a nearby hospital and relinquished care of the child.

Later that year, Burton’s 15-month-old son passed away from medical complications, which Renton said contributed to her offending as she was suffered stress, isolation and depression as a result of his death.

Between 2019 and 2021, Burton had two more children, before falling pregnant again in late 2021 with Baby Burton, who was not Balaam’s biological child.

In August 2022, the court heard Balaam became “suspicious that she was pregnant” and confronted her. He forced her to take a pregnancy test which she faked and sought no pre-natal care for the baby.

Two weeks later she gave birth at their home in Spalding, north-east of Geraldton, while Balaam and her other children were asleep.

She gave birth on the couch and then moved to the bathroom, wrapping the baby in underwear and placing him in a garbage bag, which was then hidden behind the couch in the family’s lounge room.

On Friday, the court heard Burton suffered depressive episodes, unresolved grief from trauma, had limited social support and no personal family support, as well as relationship difficulties.

The judge said Burton felt “shame” about what she had done and was suffering from feelings of “helplessness and hopelessness”.

She was also suffering from long-standing feelings of abandonment by her parents and had a lack of role modelling, rendering her unable to cope, Renton said.

Balaam took Burton to hospital after noticing blood on her legs, but while she was in there, the court was told, he discovered the garbage bag with the baby inside.

He claimed he could not see what it was but could feel it was heavy, then wrapped the body in another bag before putting it into a chest freezer.

Meanwhile, doctors at the hospital found a hormone in Burton’s blood which is only present during pregnancy and birth, and she was repeatedly questioned about whether she had recently been pregnant and where the child was.

The court was told Burton “consistently denied” being pregnant, despite doctors telling her that treatments they might give her could make her more unwell if she had recently given birth.

On August 22, 2022, a friend of Burton’s set up a GoFundMe page on her behalf to try and raise funds to help with her fake medical condition which she claimed was terminal liver cancer.

The page included information sent by her while she was in hospital that stated that she was “receiving blood transfusions, dialysis”, that she was off the liver transplant list and had been given five years to live.

Later investigations found none of it to be true.

She received over $3000 in donations and on Thursday pleaded guilty to 12 counts of gaining benefit by fraud in relation to the scam.

A few days later, on August 25, medical staff spoke with Burton again, and she continued to deny the pregnancy, prompting them to instigate child protection inquiries.

“If I had been pregnant, I would’ve told you when you said the treatment you would give me, would make me worse,” Burton told them.

Medical staff then contacted Balaam over the phone, speaking to him with Burton present. He denied the pregnancy, denied noticing anything and didn’t disclose how he found the baby.

The staff member left the room to make inquiries before Balaam was then heard telling Burton she needed to “get her shit together”, adding that she needed to “tell the hospital about the baby” before hanging up the phone.

Child protection and police were contacted, who went to the house and spoke with Balaam, who told them he found the bag behind the couch and “suspected it was a baby”, before putting it in the freezer.

He told them he didn’t know what to do with the bag and said he wanted to wait for Burton to come home so she could deal with it.

Balaam was charged with one count of lawful excuse improperly interfered with a corpse.

He told police: “I didn’t know what it was, I didn’t want to see it, I put it in the freezer in case it was something like that.”

“I thought it was the best thing to do, to put it in the freezer – what else could I do? I’ve never been in that position in my life.”

The court was told methamphetamine was found in the baby’s system and a paternity test revealed Balaam was not the baby’s father.

It wasn’t until January 2024 that Burton was arrested and interviewed by police, where she told them that the baby wasn’t breathing when it was born, and her recollection of what happened the night “gets fuzzy”.

She did claim she realised she was pregnant and said she could remember having contractions and her waters breaking and then giving birth.

Burton claimed there was no noise from the baby, but he looked normal, “like a doll” with his eyes closed.

She admitted she did not attempt to resuscitate the baby and couldn’t recall why she didn’t get help, before putting him in the bag and then waking up feeling sick.

The court was told Baby Burton was conceived as the result of a one-off sexual encounter, but Burton denied this was the reason for the secrecy.

Balaam was sentenced last year over the incident and received a 12-month community-based order for his charges.

Burton was given a 19-month prison term that was suspended for 12 months and included a treatment program to address personal development, psychiatric needs and parenting.

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