'My stepmum killed my sister and made me lie about it but now we have justice'

For almost half a century, Desmond Bernard carried the burden of a terrible secret about what happened to his little sister Andrea.

The five-year-old girl had died in 1978, after suffering severe burns in a scalding hot bath at their home in Thornton Heath, south London.

Her death had always been treated as an accident, but Bernard, who had been just eight himself at the time, knew the truth.

His stepmother Janice Nix - who was on Friday sentenced to 12 years for manslaughter - had killed her, and then threatened him to lie about what really happened.

As a terrified little boy, he'd kept his silence.

But in September 2022, Bernard walked into Croydon police station and told officers he was ready to tell them everything, in the hope that his sister could finally get justice.

Bernard remembers Andrea as a bright and outgoing little girl who loved singing and was always trying to keep up with her big brother.

"Andrea was very talkative," he tells me. "She would talk my ears off if she got a chance. She was funny, she would say the funniest things. Yeah, she was just always, you know, my little sis. We were just always with each other."

But life changed for the siblings when Janice Nix came into their lives.

The first time his father left them alone in the house with her, Bernard says she gave them both a severe beating.

"We were told that if we were to say anything, it would be worse for us. So, fear was sort of installed on the first day, and from my perspective, it felt like it was almost breaking our spirit."

Bernard describes lying in bed, listening to his father brush his teeth and praying he would not leave for work and leave them alone with her.

"We were beaten with belts. I was burnt with a cigarette, and bitten, and the way she would do that, she would make you hold out your hand, so you were to accept it, and that was soul-destroying.

"We were just living, I would say, in fear, and it was constant."

On 6 June 1978, Desmond says Andrea had been in trouble with Nix, who had ordered her to skip school and help her clean the house instead.

But Andrea had left the house, fearing another beating, and when they got home after school, Nix was furious, shouting at Andrea and hitting her.

Desmond says he ran to his room, where he heard the bath running.

"What I heard Andrea say was, 'The bath is too hot, Mummy.' She said it twice... And Janice was just telling her to get in the bath.

"I heard Andrea scream and it was... I've not heard anything screaming like that before or after."

He said after about a minute there was silence, before he heard Janice telling Andrea to "wake up".

"She didn't sound angry any more. It sounded... more scared."

That was when, he says, Nix ordered him to lie and to say it had been an accident, that they had both been in the garden when Andrea fell in the bath.

"She promised that she wouldn't hit me any more or beat me any more. And that's what I did.

"When she said she would stop beating me, I just thought... I needed for it to stop. So, I just kept on lying to people. Anyone who would ask, I would tell that story."

Andrea died in hospital on 13 July, five weeks after suffering serious burns to half of her body.

There was no police investigation and the inquest into her death lasted just half a day.

Desmond says the silence he had been ordered to keep left him "numb," and as though he were "closing a door," unable to truly be himself, even around those he was close to.

"There was a lot of, I guess, maybe self-hatred, because I kept this secret," he says. "Guilt."

Nix would go on to become a notorious south London drug dealer known as Mama J. In 1992, she was jailed for nine years for possession of Class A drugs with intent to supply.

In 2021, she published a memoir and spoke to the BBC about how she had turned away from a life of crime and found work as a probation officer.

"I don't care about her so-called redemption," Desmond says of the book. "That's not what she should be atoning for."

He says his wife saw he was struggling with his emotions around Andrea's death and gently encouraged him to have some therapy.

"At first it was really hard. I just couldn't get through a sentence without crying, you know, non-stop.

"And then I got to the realisation that this wasn't my burden to carry. I was just a child, and I was feeling guilt that I shouldn't feel."

With support from his family, he made the decision to go to the police.

Because so many years had passed, officers faced a huge challenge in finding supporting evidence but a 16-page coroner's report had survived, which showed major discrepancies in Nix's account.

She was arrested at the airport in February 2025, as she returned to London from Antigua, and charged on the same day with Andrea's manslaughter and with cruelty to Bernard between October 1975 and June 1978.

Hearing Nix give evidence in court, where she told the jury she had never been violent towards the children, and that the boiler had overheated, was very difficult for Bernard.

"I've seen her cry before, and I know, I know, that it's not genuine tears. It was hard, it made me very angry."

In May, Nix was found guilty of Andrea's manslaughter and of cruelty towards Bernard.

"I feel like, yes, justice has been done," he says, praising the work of police and prosecutors.

"I don't think Janice will ever acknowledge what she's done and that's fine, that's between her and her Maker.

"I think Andrea would be smiling now. Yeah, she'll be happy."

And what about eight-year-old Desmond, I ask? If he could talk to him now, what would he say?

"You finally did it. You finally did it. It's OK now. That's what I would say."

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