An Illawarra woman convicted of brutally assaulting Woonona teenager Louise O'Brien in the months before she died of unrelated injuries has lost a severity appeal against her prison sentence.
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The woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was jailed for two years and five months after being found guilty of four assault charges by a jury.
The presiding judge, David Frearson, set a non-parole period of 15 months, to run partly in conjunction with another sentence the woman was serving for being an accessory after the fact to Louise's manslaughter.
Louise had been living with the woman and her family for almost four years until October 2008, when she died after failing to receive medical treatment for severe injuries.
An elderly grandmother was jailed over Louise's manslaughter.
The woman and her teenage son, who were related to the grandmother, were found guilty after trial of being accessories for moving Louise's body from one northern suburbs house to another, and burying her in a wheelie bin in the backyard.
The woman later stood trial for a separate series of assaults occasioned on Louise, and was found guilty of these charges too.
She appealed against her sentence period to the NSW Court of Criminal Appeal, with her lawyers claiming it was "manifestly excessive".
The court dismissed the appeal, finding Judge Frearson's original sentence had been fair.
The CCA judgment detailed the woman's brutal actions towards Louise, including repeatedly punching her with closed fists, hitting her over the head with a milk carton, slamming her head through a glass door and hitting her on the head with a vacuum cleaner tube.
The woman's lawyers had claimed Judge Frearson failed to take into account the fact she had "suffered from a major depressive order for most of her life", however the three-judge CCA panel rejected that submission, finding to do so would not have affected the overall sentence.
"There is no basis for this court [the CCA] to interfere with the sentence imposed by the trial judge," the panel said, noting the woman had shown no remorse for her actions, nor had she accepted responsibility. The panel said if the woman was in the same situation in the future, she may well reoffend in a similar way.