Two women are in jail today. Two mothers. Both are charged with committing crimes against their children.
But the crimes could not be more different, nor the reasons for them. The outcomes are worlds apart.
And so are my feelings for the two mothers.
Sofina Nikat killed her daughter. The little girl’s name was Sanaya Sahib and Sofina suffocated her daughter before throwing her tiny dead body into a creek. Sanaya’s body lay there, partially submerged in the water for almost 24 hours while her mother pretended to cry and blamed a drunk man with dark skin. We know this because she confessed her crime to police. She told them she’d murdered her daughter.
What we don’t know is why. The only person who knows that is Sanaya’s mother. Her murderer. One and the same.
Really, it doesn’t matter why Sofina killed her daughter. The outcome remains the same. The little girl is dead.
Across the other side of the world another Australian mother sits in jail. In Beirut. Sally Faulkner tried to abduct her two small children, according to authorities in Lebanon. She sees it differently. She says she was trying to bring them home. She is their mother.
The names of Sally's kids are Lahela and Noah and they are six and four. So small. But old enough to understand what it means to be separated from a parent you love and miss desperately. They slept one night in her arms after they were reunited with her in Beirut before the police came the next morning to return them to her father.
Even the judge is a bit confused by how to categorise this. He said it’s not the same as your average abduction because it was not a crime committed for a ransom but for love. Even the judge seems to understand - at least we hope he does - that desperation and love are different to criminal intent.