Reason father Richard Sands allowed out after burning family alive

It’s a horror worthy of nightmares.

Your home alight, and your child sound asleep, completely unaware.

What makes Natalie Sands story even more disturbing is that it was her own father that deliberately lit the fire.

After bludgeoning his wife Antoinette, Richard Sands then doused the family home in petrol and set his daughter alight.

Natalie suffered burns to 80 per cent of her body in the attack.

Her son, 5, died in the fire.

Frenzied attack

The night of the attack, four years ago, is etched in her memory, she told 60 Minutes.

Her father madly clutching a jerry can and a red lighter, pouring 10 litres of fuel around the house and over her.

“As soon as he lit it, he pushed it into my chest, and that was it, and it just went whoosh, and the whole house ignited,” she said.

“I was just screaming ‘don’t do this, I’ve got kids in that room, don’t do this’.”

She desperately tried to save her son Orlando - but was forced to leave him in the room.

“It happened so fast,” she said.

“I just thought if I grab him, I’m going to burn him,” she said.

She jumped out the window to roll on the grass and to put out the flames that had engulfed her.

“It was like a wave on a beach but it was a wave of fire.

“I had to accept there was nothing I could do.”

No justice

Natalie’s father would hand himself in and confess his crime.

But he would then be diagnosed with a neodegenerative disease and a depressive disorder.

A Supreme Court judge found he was not “criminally responsible” for the deaths of his wife and grandson, and sent him to a mental health facility instead of prison.

For the last six months he has had supervised day release.

“He’s won – that’s what it felt like,” Natalie said.

“If someone is that [mentally unwell] that they’ve gone and slaughtered their own family, then why are you letting them out in the street back into the community?”

Former Supreme Court Judge Anthony Whealy said incarceration was not the answer for mentally ill offenders.

“We don’t do that anymore... lock them away like we did 100 years ago in an attic somewhere?” he said.

“That’s not humane. So, this is a problem that can’t be resolved, no matter how much sympathy we feel for the victim.”

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But Natalie said she will continue to fight the system.

“I only have two reasons why I’m alive, one is my son, and two is to try and do something better than what’s already happening,” she said.

“It’s a lifetime challenge, but I’m really up for it, I am. I’m not gonna stop.”

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