Meth-dealing mom Kerri-Ann Conley declared fit parent days before leaving kids in hot car to die

A meth-dealing mom was declared “fit” by child protective services and allowed to keep custody of her daughters just 10 days before leaving them in a hot car to die.

Kerri-Ann Conley, 30, of Logan, Queensland pleaded guilty to the manslaughter of her daughters Darcey-Helen, aged two and a half, and Chloe-Ann, aged 18 months, in February and was sentenced to nine years in prison for ‘gross criminal neglect’ .

The toddlers remained in the vehicle for nine hours as the temperature in the car rose above 60°C.

Now a shocking new report has revealed that Conley was known to the Department of Child Safety and had a long history of neglect and drug abuse.

The report revealed how Conley brutally told child protective services that she was using methamphetamine and even refused drug tests.

She would also have said that on June 5, 2018, she wanted to exchange her unborn child for an iPhone 7.

While another report claimed that on November 6, 2019, her eldest daughter Darcey-Helen was seen with a bong in her mouth while running around her home.

Darcey-Helen was taken to hospital where doctors discovered she was underweight, pale and suffering from diarrhoea.

Just a week later, on November 13, police were told that Conley was using and dealing crystal meth from her home, while her children were locked in another room.

Despite the litany of shocking abuses, child protective services went on to declare Conley “a willing and able parent.”

According to the report obtained by 9News, child safety officials did not investigate Conley or her history due to “work pressure.”

It also found that serious child safety complaints about Conley were not followed up or escalated to investigation status.

Just 10 days after Conley was declared a suitable parent, her daughters were found dead.

In February, the court was told that Conley had deliberately left the two girls in her car while they slept.

She had taken them to a friend’s house at 11:30 PM on November 22, 2019 before returning home around 4 AM.

Instead of getting her daughters off their seats, she went inside, dawdled on her phone for a few hours, and fell asleep.

Darcy-Helen and Chloe-Ann were left in the vehicle in direct sunlight for hours as the temperature rose to 61.5 degrees.

The girls’ skin was hot to the touch, covered in burns and blisters and was “peeling off” when paramedics tried to resuscitate them, the court was told.

The court was also told that Conley revealed she smoked drug ice cream daily while in custody to an undercover police officer.

Supreme Court Justice Peter Applegarth described her in court as a “drug addict” and said the thought of the distressed children awake and strapped into the hot car as they died was “too much to bear.”

“Your grossly negligent behavior was the decision to leave your vulnerable children unkempt, unheard and unnoticed in the dark,” he said.

Autopsies confirmed that the girls died of hyperthermia when the body was heated to more than 40 °C (not to be confused with hypothermia, which is the result of excessive cold), but a time of death could not be properly determined.

Conley had initially been charged with murder, but that was downgraded, with Darcey-Helen’s father, Peter Jackson, told that murder was “too hard to prove.”

If Conley had been convicted of the double murder, she would have been serving a 30-year mandatory non-parole period under Queensland law.

Mr Jackson said he could not understand why Conley could have pleaded for a lesser charge of manslaughter.

“I still think it must be murder. She should have gotten the 30 years,” Mr. Jackson told the ABC.

‘I don’t think it’s fair. These were defenseless children.’

Conley will be eligible for parole in November next year after serving three years in prison.