Paige Humphreys was 31 days old when she was killed in an act of domestic violence.

She would be turning five. Pulling at her mother’s hand. Crossing the road to pre-school. Maybe she’d ask for cheese sticks in her lunch box. Maybe her school bag would have “Dora the Explorer” on the front pocket.

Paige Humphreys would be counting down to her fifth birthday, had it not been for her father – Michael John Humphreys – who killed her when she was only 31 days old in their home in Gympie, Queensland.

He couldn’t handle her crying. He lost his temper. Not once, but time and time again.

Baby Paige died from severe internal injuries including broken vertebrae and ribs, a fractured skill, severe brain damage and lacerations to her spleen and pancreas.

On Friday, Humphreys faced the Supreme Court in Brisbane where he was sentenced to nine years in prison.

Three years ago Paige’s mother, now-26-year-old Sarah Mooney, was also convicted. The court found she had failed to provide the necessities of life to her newborn. She did not go to prison, as her sentence was suspended.

Sarah Ferguson and Andrew a former abuser talk about Domestic Violence in Australia. Post continues below.

She was in the courtroom on Friday, watching the father of her children – Paige, and two older siblings – as he faced retribution. The same man who once held her by the throat, prohibiting her from taking their then-10-day-old daughter to hospital. Paige had suffered one of the many “accidents” that would eventually lead to her death, 21 days of suffering later.

Mooney sat there and shook as Justice David Boddice used words like “brutal, cruel and tragic” to describe the crimes of her ex-lover.

She, along with the rest of the courtroom, heard how Paige experienced pain and extreme suffering before she died.

Mooney was wearing pink to honour her daughter, who will never be five years old. She stared and listened to Justice Boddice asking Humphreys how he could inflict such significant pain to a defenceless baby. “It is inconceivable that one human being could do that to a baby at that age,” Justice Boddice said.

Mooney has also been asked – by the media; by the public on social media; when facing a judge for her own court case three years ago – how she could let her daughter die.

Now, for the first time, she has spoken out.

"I did everything I physically could - being in a serious domestic violence relationship - to keep not just my baby safe but my two other children and my mother," she told the Gympie Times.

"If you're in a relationship you make excuses for the person who supposedly loves you back."

She was threatened. "I tried everything I could to take her to the hospital, but I had someone holding me up against the wall by my throat - saying if I did he would be accused of bashing Paige and my two other children would be taken off me."

She didn't have access to money. She wasn't in control of the phone or the car. "If I had the chance - if I had the keys and the phone - I wouldn't have stayed there," she said.

Quite simply, Mooney felt she was trapped: "It [was] physically impossible to get out."

In our readiness to blame; to put stories like this down to irresponsibility, shrugging our shoulders "I would never let that happen", let's remember the hundreds of women who do find themselves in situations of domestic violence in Australia every year.

"I missed the signs and I'll do my time for the rest of my life for not standing up to protect her against the things that I now know," Mooney said.

We shouldn't be wondering what a five-year-old Paige would look like, sound like, feel like. She should be here, pulling at her mother's fingers. She would be here, if it weren't for the wholly-preventable, utterly pointless, all-too-common crime that is domestic violence.

In so many cases, just like Paige's; just like the one woman who dies every week in Australia at the hands of an intimate partner; just like the one-in-for Australian women who are currently living with a partner who is emotionally or physically or sexually abusive  - by the time the signs are clear, it is already too late.