Scenic cities often hide dark underbellies, the world over

The statistics are grim and getting darker by the day - parents unable to cope with their children and sometime unfit to parents to begin with - are turning to murdering their children. Sometimes it's a fit of anger, sometime it's just exhaustion and sometime it's a chilling plan.

In this Cairn's mother case, it was perhaps one of the more gory forms of parental torture and abuse. Her 8-year-old daughter was found dead in a unit in Cairns in November 2011 under suspicious circumstances. The then 27-year-old mother and a 22-year-old man believed to be in a relationship with her were questioned and formally charged.

The woman was initially charged with two counts of assault occasioning bodily harm whilst armed and one count of torture while the man was charged with one count of cruelty to a child under 16 years. In august of 2012, the charges were upped to manslaughter against the man and murder against the woman.

Yesterday at the Queensland courts, the woman confessed to bashing her daughter over the head with a vacuum pole over a period of a year. A murder charge against the 28-year-old was downgraded after she admitted in court today to manslaughter and two counts of assault occasioning bodily harm while armed. It is not clear why she did it.

Baby "Moses" finds a family, and his mother: In a happy twist of events though, the mother of abandoned baby "Moses" was found and there will be no charges filed against her. The family on whose doorstep the baby was left at is in turn more than eager to take in the child and raise him as their own considering the mother's financial and metal status. Both mother and child are in good health and it took time to trace her because the baby was born at home and not as a hospital.

Read more about Killer Mums of 2013 and the mother who underfed her toddler to death.