Mother denies claims she called her toddler a 'little freak' before her death

A mother denies calling her daughter, Sadie-Leigh Gardner, names, yelling at her and being “at breaking point” in the time before the 17-month-old died of traumatic head injuries.

Sadie-Leigh died in 2019 from what pathologist Dr Kilak Kesha has called “blunt force head injuries”.

Her death was the subject of two jury trials, after her mother’s former partner, Adrian Clancy, was charged with murder.

He was found guilty at the first trial in 2021, but the Court of Appeal quashed that conviction and he underwent a retrial.

He was acquitted at the second trial in 2024.

Today Sadie-Leigh’s mother, who cannot be named for legal reasons, spoke at a coroner’s inquest into how the toddler received those fatal injuries.

When asked if it was true that her Tauranga neighbours had heard her call Sadie-Leigh a “little freak”, swearing and yelling at the toddler before her death, the woman answered “no”.

The mother was questioned by Clancy’s lawyer, Rob Stevens, who asked her about the statements of several neighbours given to police after Sadie-Leigh’s death.

Stevens said one neighbour had told police the mother would “completely lose her rag” at her toddler, telling her to “shut up”, “get away from me” and swearing abuse.

• 'She looked dead': Neighbour gives evidence about toddler Sadie-Leigh
• 'Breaking point': Man accused of toddler's murder claims her mother caused injuries

The mother responded that the witness was not her “side-by-side” neighbour and they had never met.

Stevens asked her about a neighbour who claimed to have overheard the woman calling Sadie-Leigh a “little freak” and a “little creep” and whether that neighbour was lying to police.

“That’s her evidence ... but I deny it,” the woman responded.

Another neighbour, Stevens claimed, who the mother said she didn’t know, had reported that she heard the woman yelling at Sadie-Leigh “almost daily”.

The mother said she had never denied that she raised her voice at her daughter but that was very different from yelling.

Stevens said three neighbours reported hearing the mother call Sadie-Leigh a “freak”, which the mother said she did not accept.

“All three of these women are misleading the police when they told the police that you would call Sadie a freak?” Stevens questioned.

“That’s the evidence,” the mother responded.

The woman admitted that there were “absolutely” days around that time when she felt like she wasn’t coping as a single mother, but said she was never rough with her child.

Stevens took the mother to photo evidence from a mothers’ Facebook group, where the woman had sought help about her “clingy” child.

“When does separation anxiety in kids stop? Because I’m at breaking point,” the inquest heard she wrote to the page.

Seven years later, the mother said she didn’t think she was actually at breaking point at that time, just tired, but she accepted it was what she had written back then.

“I think when you’re at that stage of having a child that’s clung to you 24/7, and you can’t get anything done and she’s screaming because all she wants me to do is pick her up or cling to me, it’s not enjoyable, and I would still stand by that to this day,” she told the inquest.

 
Coroner Tracey Fitzgibbon is presiding over the inquest into Sadie-Leigh Gardner's death. Photo / Anna Heath

Earlier today, the mother told the inquest that Clancy had been living with her and Sadie-Leigh at the time of the toddler’s death

She said when they first met, Clancy lied about his age, claiming to be about 29 years old. But she found out later he was almost 40. She was around 20.

She said the afternoon that Sadie-Leigh had become unresponsive, the toddler was grizzly with a cold and Clancy had put her to bed.

The mother went in to give her cough medicine and checked on her again before she left for a beauty appointment around 3.30pm.

During her appointment, she checked her phone and saw she had missed calls from Clancy and texts saying that Sadie-Leigh wasn’t breathing and to hurry to the hospital.

The mother said that at the hospital, Clancy said Sadie-Leigh was fine and was having an asthma attack.

“I could see she was not fine.”

She recalled someone later told her that Clancy had changed clothes before heading to the hospital.

She also said that after Sadie-Leigh’s death, Clancy had multiple suggestions for why she had died, suggesting “more than once” that the mother or Sadie-Leigh’s grandmother caused the injuries.

The mother said she had also gone over multiple “desperate possibilities” with her own mum of what could have happened to her daughter, which she did not actually believe were true.

“None of them changed what I know to be true. I left Sadie safe, settled and breathing normally in Adrian’s care and, in a short amount of time, she’d suffered injuries that caused her death.”

Ella Scott-Fleming has been a journalist for three years and previously worked at the Otago Daily Times, Gore Ensign and Metro Magazine. She has an interest in court and general reporting. She’s currently based in Auckland covering justice-related stories.