'My mother cut my throat and then prepared to roast me in the oven': Horrific ordeal of the woman nearly killed in Biblical sacrifice when she was just two

Susannah Birch was two when her mother cut her throat in a ritual sacrifice

Psychotic mother cut her throat to enact Old Testament passage

She was preparing to roast her daughter in oven of Australian family home

'I can remember her boiling the knives,' Susannah recalls her Mum's attack



She is now an inspiring young woman and mental health advocate

Susannah and father recall speak about about shocking event for first time







Susannah Birch remembers the day her mother prepared her for a ritual Old Testament sacrifice, cutting her throat with a kitchen knife and preparing to roast her in the oven of the family home in the small Queensland town of Dalby.

It was the Australia weekend in January 1989, when Birch was two years old and the only child of parents John and Linda Andrew who were Seventh Day Adventists.



John knew that Linda had lately been praying more, but he was utterly unaware his wife was slipping into her first psychotic episode.

Survivor: Susannah Birch wore a tracheostomy on her neck (above) from the age of two until she was 13 years old after her own mother slit her throat and prepared to roast her in the family oven as a a sacrifice in an Old Testament ritual after 'voices' told Linda Andrew to kill her child

Miraculous: Susannah still remmebers her mother 'boiling the knives' for her ritual sacrifice and then coming at her to slit her throat. Father John Andrew (pictured, above, with Susannah in hospital) tearfully recalls seeing her for the first time after the attack when she wrapped herself around him 'like a koala'

Linda had apparently been reading the Old Testament book of Genesis, and in particular the verses in which Abraham is instructed to sacrifice his only son, Isaac.

'I can remember her boiling the knives,' Susannah, now 27, said of the fateful day 25 years ago.

Her mother had dressed the toddler in clean pyjamas, 'anointed' her in oil as per the Bible passage, and laid her out on a sheepksin rug on a tea chest in the kitchen.

'I remember the knife coming down towards my face and I remember putting my hands up to stop it,' Susannah told ABC Radio National.

Linda cut right through her daughter's laryngeal nerves which connected to her vocal cords. As per the Bible story in which Abraham prepared to make his son Isaac a 'burnt offering' on a wooden altar, Linda was preparing to put her daughter into the oven.

'She told me that she’d held Susannah’s head till Susannah turned blue, which was about 40 minutes,' John Andrew said.

The voices had told her that it was an impure sacrifice and to put her into the oven straight away. '[But] there must have been part of the sanity still there because she argued with those thoughts and said "No. She’s not dead yet – I can’t put her in the oven until she’s dead",' Mr Andrew said.

'She understands that she came out of that psychotic episode and realised – but wasn’t really sure – that she’d done something wrong. So she rang the Dalby police station and said, "I think I’ve done something wrong – I’ve just cut my daughter’s throat",' he said.

'I ... remember being on the ambulance bed outside our house,'



'It was a very sunny day and I just have this vague memory of looking down at myself.'

Mr Andrew rushed home to find his wife being carted off by police and his daughter to hospital in an ambulance to Dalby Hospital where, luckily, a skilled medical team had been summoned.

The police said 'your wife just slit your daughter's throat. [They] asked about my religion and the Lindy Chamberlain case.'

Police later 'hushed up' the attack, fearful of attracting the storm of negative publicity which had accompanied the 1980 case in the Australian outback, when a dingo took the infant daughter of Seventh Day Adventist couple Lindy and Michael Chamberlain, and Lindy was jailed (and later exonerated) for 'sacrificing' her baby Azaria. They also wished to protect the family's privacy.



Susannah's oesophagus was repaired and she was given a tracheostomy, in which an exterior tube is inserted to allow her to breathe. Despite the excellent medical care which saved her life, Susannah was not expected to talk again.



John Andrew still weeps as he recalls the moment he got to see his daughter, who had been flown to Brisbane for treatment.

'The nurse said, "look, here's your Dad". She shot round and her arms went straight around me and she latched on like a koala bear and wouldn't let go. She just wanted her Dad.'

Susannah can still recall the blue stitches in her fingers, on the defensive wounds when she held up her hands against her mother descending with the knife.

'Six weeks later, at the nurses station, this little squeaky voice started yelling, "Dad, Dad",' Mr Andrew said. 'We had no idea she as ever going to talk again.

'For the next three months, I visited Linda and Susanna. I found that very hard, someone you'd known and loved for years and was totally different.

'I was called into a staff meeting and they explained schizophrenia and bipolar and whatever.'



As a three-year-old, Susannah began speaking with her father about the incident, saying 'Mum cut my neck' and, with a psychiatrist's encouragement, John Andrew increasingly talked with his daughter about what had happened.



After a year in the mental hospital, Linda Andrew returned home. Her husband was told she could make a full recovery. Social services were involved in the family's rehabilitation and Susannah was not left unsupervised with her mother.



'While I was growing up, I wasn't allowed to talk about it,' Susannah said, 'I was too busy playing... at home on my own. I loved reading. I loved learning.'

Between the ages of ten and 13, Susannah watched her mother slip into further psychotic episodes and gain the realisation that the attack 'could be her fault and maybe she owed me an apology'.

When she was 13 years old, Susannah's parents divorced and she began to open up about what had happened.

'I began telling everyone what my mother did,' she said. Family even joked about it, saying, well at least she didn't roast you alive.

'For a long time I felt I owed my mother something because she was sick and if I didn’t help her, that would make me a bad person,' Susannah told Amanda Gearing of The Courier-Mail.

'[Then] I realised I had to look after myself, I kept repeating to myself, "there's nothing I can't do".'

Susannah had laser surgery to remove her tracheostomy. Prior to that, her father would have to change the tube as often as every three days. The operation allowed her to go to school for the first time.



Susannah is now 27 years old. She has a faint scar across her neck and a catch in her voice, testimony to the hard won regaining of her speech, which she did using the top of her oesophagus to generate sounds.



She became a writer, operating several blogs and Facebook pages, advocating the right of people who live with those who have mental health issues.

In 2005, she met her husband, David, and they now have two young children. It is only now she has been able to speak out publicly about the attack which changed her life, and say that her mother's decision not to take medication for her disorder was her own, not Susannah's responsibility..

'After 2007, I stopped seeing her [my mother]. Our paths cross, but it's rare. Basically all I wanted her to say sorry.

'It wasn't till I had my own children, I realised I had issues.



'I have a knife phobia and hyper-vigilance, which is similar to paranoia. I'm always looking around me for issues including knives or things close to my face.

'One of the biggest realisations I've had, is if you've every suffered abuse or mistreatment at the hands of a parents, they don't change necessarily ... but it's the best choice for you [to get on with your life].

'I can raise my children as normal humans, something i never had in my life.