System failed Kiesha's killer mum: court EVEN Kristi Anne Abrahams' lawyer says it's easy to hate the woman who killed her daughter, six-year-old Kiesha Weippeart. But Abrahams is the product of a system that failed her following a violent and abusive childhood, defence barrister Janet Manuell, SC, told the Supreme Court on Thursday. Abrahams is also a woman who was unable to cope with motherhood with an IQ under 70, the court heard. "It's very confronting for a community to accept the death of a child at the hands of a mother," Ms Manuell said. There's no question that what she has done is awful. But Kristi Abrahams is very much a product of what happened to her. The court heard Abrahams, who has pleaded guilty to murdering Kiesha in July 2010, suffered a violent childhood, found her mother dead when she was aged around 10 and was placed in inappropriate care for several years. Abrahams didn't get the care she needed and that contributed to her "anger, frustration and emotional turmoil" which ultimately led to the murder of Kiesha, Ms Manuell said. There was no evidence Abrahams was responsible for the other injuries suffered by Kiesha prior to her death, she added. The court heard Abrahams has an intellectual disability and an IQ of 68. She was a mother who "wasn't coping," Ms Manuell said. (She) has punished herself and continues to punish herself for what she's done. But crown prosecutor Christopher Maxwell, QC, said Abrahams had shown little remorse and had minimised her actions to an undercover police officer during her only account of what she did to Kiesha. Abrahams claims she gave Kiesha "a little nudge" with her foot, causing the child to hit her head on a bed. The Crown submits Kiesha was punched at least two or three times to different sides of her jaw, and presented her tiny jawbone as evidence. The court has heard evidence Kiesha was the victim of severe child abuse, with several old injuries discovered during a post-mortem examination. Abrahams was convicted of biting Kiesha when she was just 15-months-old and, when she was three, the little girl told a social worker that her mother was responsible for burning her with a cigarette. Mr Maxwell said Abrahams viewed the child "with anger and enmity" and resented her resemblance to her biological father, Chris Weippeart. After Kiesha was murdered, Abrahams and her partner, Robert Smith, kept her body in a suitcase for some days, before burning her body and burying it in a shallow grave. They then reported her missing and pretended for the next eight months the little girl had disappeared. During this time, Abrahams played the role of a "grieving mother who had lost her child," Mr Maxwell said. In sentencing Abrahams, Justice Ian Harrison must decide whether she intended to kill or cause grievous bodily harm to Kiesha or whether she acted with reckless indifference to human life. "This child suffered so much within her life," Mr Maxwell said. Abrahams will be sentenced on July 18.