A British woman received a life sentence on Friday after being convicted of killing her two young daughters because they “got in the way of her sex life.”
In a Birmingham Crown Court, Louise Porton, 23, was sentenced to a minimum term of 32 years for the murders of Lexi Draper, 3, and 17-month-old Scarlett Vaughan, the BBC reported.
The two girls died 18 days apart in 2018.
Porton denied committing the grisly acts, but Judge Amanda Yip was unconvinced.
While handing down her sentence, Yip called the murders “evil” and “calculated.”
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“These were blameless young children who were plainly vulnerable and ought to have been able to rely on their mother to protect and nurture them,” she said.
According to Yip, Porton had no mental health history or mental disorder that might have mitigated her actions.
“One way or another you squeezed the life out of each of your daughters, only calling the emergency services when you knew they were dead,” she said. “I am sure at the time of the deaths, you intended to kill each of your daughters.”
“Why you did so, only you will know,” Yip added.
Prosecutors said Porton’s motive for the murders was that her daughters “got in the way” of her sex life.
After killing Lexi in January, Porton was reportedly heard “laughing” at a funeral parlor. A witness told the court that Porton was “using FaceTime and that she was speaking to a man.”
Two days later, Scarlett would die by her hands.
During Porton’s trial, jurors learned she accepted 41 friend requests on a dating app the day after Lexi’s death. A week before Lexi died, her mother took topless photos in a bathroom and arranged to meet with a man from the dating site in order to exchange sexual acts for money, according to prosecutors.
Doctors could find no “natural reason” for the girls’ deaths. Meanwhile, Warwickshire Police said it was “clear from the evidence” that Porton had tried to kill her oldest daughter twice before she eventually succeeded.
Prosecutors told the court during trial that Porton had Googled “Why did my 3 year(-old) stop breathing” and “How long after drowning can someone be resuscitated?”
In a victim impact statement, the girls’ father excoriated Porton.
“They were just an inconvenience to you; how could you do this?” Chris Draper said.
The Louise Porton case amid a woke focus on criminal injustice
Porton’s conviction at a time when purveyors of culture are revisiting the recent past from a newly woke perspective. That has often meant more sympathy for those targeted by the criminal justice system.
One example is Ava DuVernay’s new Netflix series about the Central Park Five, “When They See Us,” which is damning of police and prosecutors in the case. Another is “Bobbitt,” an Amazon Prime documentary series that has helped rehabilitate Lorena Bobbitt’s image and even make her something of a feminist icon.
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However, there are still limits. Two 2016 movies about the O.J. Simpson trial – ESPN’s docuseries “O.J.: Made in America” and FX’s miniseries “The People v. O. J. Simpson: American Crime Story” – did little to help the main character’s case.