Australians were outraged to learn that a woman who murdered her roommate over a $50 theft — with the roommate’s four-year-old child present — was approved to leave prison to undergo in vitro fertilization (IVF) to try for a second baby.
According to the Herald Sun, Alicia Schiller was convicted in 2017 of murdering her roommate, Tyrelle Evertsen-Mostert, while high on crystal meth. Schiller stabbed Evertsen-Mostert to death, with one of the latter’s children present, after discovering a $50 theft. Schiller was sentenced to 16 years in prison.
Schiller is already a mother to one child, but allegedly wanted a second chance at motherhood, saying she missed the chance to raise her child due to her prison sentence. She requested to undergo IVF while imprisoned at Victoria’s Dame Phyllis Frost Centre, and her request was approved. The original plan was for her to receive a special escort to and from treatment, and then if she were to become pregnant, the child would have stayed with her in the prison until he or she was five years old. (The prison has special units allowing children of inmates remain with their mothers.) After this point, the child would have left the prison to be raised by Schiller’s mother.
However, in an unexpected twist, IVF clinics refused to work with Schiller, and she was forced to give up on her plans.
The loved ones of Schiller’s victims were appalled at the idea of allowing Schiller to undergo IVF before she eventually withdrew her request.
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Tobias Evertsen-Mostert, who was 12 when his mother was murdered, told the Herald Sun he was outraged. “I was an orphan, when this b*** did this; my dad died a year earlier, so all my milestones as a kid, I had nobody to celebrate them; I had no parents,” he said. “You left three kids motherless, you animal. You stabbed your friend. I stand strongly against this (the IVF treatment).”
The late roommate’s sister, Miranda Evertsen-Mostert, said Schiller had already abandoned one child, and was trying to replace that child with a new one. “Where’s the justice? She is in maximum security prison to serve her time. It’s getting hard for her and now she’s trying to get the next leg a lot easier,” she said. “She was a mum once, but not a good one. How does her child feel? She’s been abandoned and is now going to be replaced. Another child traumatised, being brought up in jail for five years. No knowledge of large groups of people, pets, buses, shops. It’s a stupid idea — and what about the three boys who have grown up without their mother [Tyrelle Evertsen-Mostert]?! They have just passed their mum’s 10th anniversary of her death. The boys are suffering traumas due to their mother’s death.”
The grandparents of the four-year-old girl who was present when her mother was killed also condemned the idea, and specifically pointed out how cruel it would be to intentionally allow a child to be conceived and then raised in a prison.
“Are there going to be other women in prison wanting to have babies? There are better places to have babies. She can be a mother when she gets out. She doesn’t have to be a mother in prison,” Yvonne Gentle said. “What about the child? Did she consider the child? I think it’s a selfish act to bring a child up in prison.”
Despite the outcome, some have expressed concern over the precedent that has been set, with Schiller’s request having been approved before she eventually withdrew it. The door has now been opened for others to make similar requests in the future, potentially turning children into commodities to be bought and sold by anyone who wants them — even prison inmates — regardless of whether or not it’s in a child’s best interests.
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