Esther Arunga reunited with her daughters five years later

Former Kenyan news anchor Esther Arunga has been reunited with her daughters, five years after they were placed under foster care.

During her trial at the Brisbane Supreme Court, Justice Martin Burns expressed remorse over her situation saying she had suffered a ‘great deal’.

“You went from being a wife and a mother, who was at that time nursing a six-month-old baby and who was otherwise trying to establish your young family in a new county, to losing your son, husband and daughters,” the judge said on Thursday.

Arunga has two Australian-born daughters, who were two years and six months old respectively at the time of their older brother Sinclair’s death.

Sinclair was three years old.

Justice Burns concluded that Esther’s cultural beliefs led her to mislead police during investigations.

“You clearly deferred to (your husband) for most of what you said and did and demonstrated a real sense of obligation to him.”

“You must be taken to have been in shock at the death of your son at the times when you were interviewed … and further to be grieving at your loss,” he added.

Arunga was convicted of being an accessory in her son’s brutal murder in 2014 and sentenced to ten months in prison but immediately released on parole on Thursday.

It is not clear whether the father, Quincy Timberlake, the main suspect in the killing, is in police custody or at a mental health facility.

Report from Brisbane Times, 7News.com and Australian Associated Press.