Mother Slit Daughter's Throat in Old Testament Sacrifice: 'I Remember the Knife,' Recalls Susanna Birch
Susannah Birch had a traumatic experience when she was just a little girl, but is just now revealing what happened all those years ago. Her mother, suffering from bipolar disorder, decided to sacrifice her daughter, following the Old Testament story of Abraham sacrificing his only son, Isaac.
Susannah was only two years old and the only daughter of John and Linda Andrew, who were practicing Seventh Day Adventists in Queensland, Australia.
Comparisons have been made between the biblical sacrifice of Isaac, Abraham's only son, and Susannah's story. Yet John had no idea that Linda would actually try to do something so horrific to their daughter.
Get Our Latest News for FREE
"I can remember her boiling the knives," Susannah told ABC Radio National. "I remember the knife coming down towards my face and I remember putting my hands up to stop it."
Linda slit Susannah's throat and managed to cut through her trachea and vocal chords, leaving her unable to speak for six weeks. She then attempted to put Susannah into the oven in order to make her a "burned sacrifice" in the words of the bible story.
"She told me that she'd held Susannah's head 'til Susannah turned blue, which was about 40 minutes," John told The Courier Mail. "The voices had told her that it was an impure sacrifice and to put her in the oven straight away. 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.'"
"She understands that she came out of that psychotic episode and realized – 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,'" John added.
Susannah was rushed to the hospital and underwent surgery. Doctors inserted a tracheotomy tube, which she wore from age 2 to 13. Linda was placed in a psychiatric hospital and released one year later. Susannah, now 27, has reportedly not seen her own mother since 2007 but is focused on her husband and raising her own preschool-age daughters.
