This archive report was first published on 19 July 2019.
On July 19, 2019, a significant chapter in the life of former Kenyan TV presenter Esther Arunga came to a close as she was reunited with her two Australian-born children, five years after they were placed under foster care.
The court had stripped custody of the two girls from Ms. Arunga in 2014, following her charges as an accessory to the murder of her three-year-old son, Sinclair Timberlake, in June of that year. The two girls were just two and six months old when they were separated from their mother.
Ms. Arunga was sentenced to 10 months in prison but was immediately freed on parole after she pleaded guilty to lying to Australian police about her husband Quincy Timberlake’s role in the murder of their son in order to help him escape justice.
Justice Martin Burns of the Brisbane Supreme Court expressed remorse over Ms. Arunga’s situation, saying she had suffered a ‘great deal’. He noted that she had been in shock and grieving at the time of the interviews with police.
Ms. Arunga confessed that she found Timberlake hitting their son on the stomach in the bathroom on the night of June 17th, 2014. The boy died later that night at their home in Kallangur, north of Brisbane.
