THEIR infant daughter had been seriously ill for days before Thomas and Manju Sam took her to hospital. Chronic eczema had left baby Gloria's skin raw and bleeding but her parents were jetlagged after a trip to India and too tired to seek medical help.
It was only after the nine-month-old developed an eye infection that her parents changed their minds. Even then, Thomas Sam went to a morning church service before they took Gloria to hospital. But as a court heard yesterday, they were already a week too late - by that stage, Gloria was too sick to be saved. Weak and malnourished, she died from infection in May 2002.
Gloria developed eczema at four months but her parents did not seek specialist medical treatment. Her father - who practised and taught homeopathy - preferred to treat her himself.
The Sams were sentenced in the NSW Supreme Court yesterday after a jury found them guilty of manslaughter by criminal negligence. Jailing Thomas Sam for at least six years and Manju Sam for a minimum of four, Justice Peter Johnson said the baby's distress and the need for medical treatment would have been obvious.
The parents' failure to seek proper medical care, subjecting Gloria to significant pain over an extended period, could be characterised as cruelty, he said.
Gloria was finally taken to the Sydney Children's Hospital in Randwick on May 5, three days before her death. Staff had never seen a baby in such an extreme condition. Her skin had been eroded by eczema, she was in severe pain and her hair had turned white. The court heard expert medical evidence that had she been given medical attention a week earlier, she probably could have survived.
The judge said that unlike others convicted of this crime, the Sams were intelligent and well-educated with a supportive family network. It weighed against them in sentencing. ''Gloria suffered helplessly and unnecessarily … from a condition that was treatable,'' he said.
A psychologist gave evidence that Sam had boasted of his homeopathic credentials and emphasised his ''spiritual maturity as a Christian''.
Justice Johnson said he continued to display ''an arrogant approach to what he perceived to be the superior benefits of homeopathy compared with conventional medicine''.
He said Manju Sam, who deferred to her husband, had ''failed the child in her most important duty, with fatal results''.
The couple wept in the dock on learning they would be jailed, separating them from their second child - born since Gloria's death - who also suffered from eczema. Finding Thomas Sam culpable both as Gloria's father and her treating homeopath, the judge jailed him for a maximum eight years. Manju Sam was jailed for a maximum five years and four months.
They will be eligible for parole in 2015 and 2013 respectively.