A woman who got her teenage son to set fire to a rental property twice to keep a man she met on TikTok interested in her has been jailed for three and a half years.
The woman pleaded guilty to two counts of arson and was sentenced in the Supreme Court of Tasmania by Chief Justice Christopher Shanahan in August.
The court heard the woman met the 40-year-old man on TikTok in October 2023 and started a relationship with him.
The man was still married to and living with his estranged wife, who had rented a home from a local couple.
The family had already moved out after an electrical fire in the meter box.
The court heard the man wanted revenge on his estranged wife, who he claimed had cheated on him.
He asked the woman to find someone to burn the house down and told her he had left the front door open.
Instead of finding someone, the woman turned to her own son. She told him to go to the property and “burn her out”, the court heard.
The court heard the woman was prepared to do anything to keep the man interested in her as a partner.
That night the boy took petrol from the family lawnmower, walked to the property about 11:30pm, poured it over the front doorway and decking and lit it before running off. The house was badly damaged.
As it burned, the woman photographed the flames from her lounge room and updated the man on the fire crews.
But the shed was still standing. “Shed is still up, lol half a job xx,” he texted her.
He followed up: “There is stuff in the shed of hers to burn, that too please lol xxxxxx.”
A few nights later the woman sent her son back to torch the shed too. The damage was estimated at $417,402.
The woman told police she was “truly sorry” and did it because she was in a relationship with the man.
The judge said the woman said she was “the person in the middle, arranging the fires”.
The court heard she had a long history of family violence and is the full-time carer for another son with complex disabilities.
Shanahan said the man was the driving force behind the fires. He was jailed for four years on appeal.
The woman’s son was dealt with separately as a youth.
Sentencing the woman, Shanahan said there was “a strong need to impose a sentence which reflects the need to punish you for your offending, denounce your conduct and deter both you and others from offending of this nature”.
“Your criminal culpability is significant. Had you not instructed your son to set the fires it is unclear whether this offending would have occurred,” he said.
The woman will be eligible for parole after 15 months and was ordered to pay compensation.
