GUILTY Australia - Girl, 12, beaten to death, Aberglasslyn, NSW, 23 Sept 2015

Neighbours said the family, understood to be part of the region’s large African community, kept to themselves. “You’d see the girl walking past sometimes to the shop or whatever, but she was very quiet; she would just keep her head down,” neighbour Megan Colman said. “It’s just such a horrible thing to happen. I really feel for that poor mother.”

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The mother of a 12-year-old girl allegedly murdered by her stepfather following sustained physical abuse has been arrested over the schoolgirl's death...

It will be alleged the mother showed "gross negligence" by knowing that the girl was being continually physically abused before she was allegedly bashed by her stepfather and put to bed in the family home at Aberglasslyn, near Newcastle in the Hunter region, last September. She was found dead at 5.45am the following morning...

A 31-year-old man, the girl's stepfather, is still before the courts after being charged with murder.

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A man has been convicted of murder after he killed his 12-year-old stepdaughter at their home in the NSW Hunter region two years ago.

The man, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was charged after the girl was found dead in her room at Aberglasslyn, a suburb of Maitland, in the early hours of September 23, 2015.

The man pleaded guilty in the NSW Supreme Court in Sydney on Wednesday, appearing via audio-video link from South Coast Correctional Centre.

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A Hunter Valley man who tortured and murdered his stepdaughter with bed slats, belts and electrical cords has been sentenced to 37 years in jail.

The 33-year-old, who can only be referred to as JK, murdered his 12-year-old stepdaughter, known as CN, in the New South Wales Hunter Valley in September 2015.

Justice Hamill said the girl had at least 50 injuries on her skin and an unknown number of internal injuries at the time of her death.

"After being tied to a bed intermittently and beaten over three days by a man who should have been protecting her, her little body gave up," he said.

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The woman, who cannot be named, pleaded guilty to manslaughter last week on the basis she did nothing to stop the years of attacks that culminated in three days of horrific abuse and the girl’s death in September, 2015.

It was a difficult sentencing exercise for Justice Peter Hamill, who had to weigh up the woman’s “extraordinary subjective case” against what was a “gross and sustained” case of criminal negligence that resulted in the death of an innocent child.

Ultimately, Justice Hamill said the only appropriate punishment was a period in custody, sentencing the woman to a maximum of four years in jail, with a non-parole period of 18 months.

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