Jail ‘damaged’ Lindy: Michael Chamberlain

Lindy Chamberlain became “institutionalised” after she was wrongly accused of killing her daughter Azaria and went to jail, her ex-husband says.

Speaking in an interview with Channel Seven on Sunday, Michael Chamberlain said he and his former wife were “totally unprepared” for the 1982 verdict that found Ms Chamberlain – now known as Lindy Chamberlain-Creighton – sentenced to life in prison for murdering their baby.

Mr Chamberlain was given a suspended sentence for being an accessory after the fact.

Describing his feelings at the verdict, he said it was another “`Oh my God’ moment”.

“I was in denial,” he said.

The husband and wife were exonerated at a 1987 royal commission but he said the 18 months that Ms Chamberlain spent locked up damaged her.

“She became institutionalised, she became quite a different person,” he said.

“She became quite assertive and she started to run her own ship rather than us trying to work it out together.”

In an emotional address to a packed courtroom in Darwin this month, Deputy Northern Territory coroner Elizabeth Morris found that a dingo killed Azaria while the family was on a camping trip at Ayers Rock in 1980.

Ten days before the finding, Mr Chamberlain, along with his daughter Zahra, visited the site of Azaria’s death.

After his daughter was snatched out of her unzipped tent by a dingo, Mr Chamberlain said he had asked his then wife why she didn’t zip up the tent.

Although it had been stated that the tent’s zipper was damaged before the dingo attack, Mr Chamberlain said he believed it was damaged later.

But he said it was a “moot point”.

“She was our first daughter, we prayed for her and we got her,” he said.

Zahra said Azaria had an indelible impact on her life and that on occasion the connection had caused her heartache.

In a particularly traumatic incident, Zahra said someone had killed her nine pet rabbits while she was away on Christmas holidays, leaving a note signed by the “magic dingo claw”.

Speaking of her own father’s grief, she said the stress of the inquest had been difficult.

“He (Dad) has been getting much worse, he has been fraying at the edges,” she said.

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