source: Court Reporter Candice Keller From: AdelaideNow , January 25, 2012

CONVINCED her children were about to be brainwashed by their "cult leader" grandparents, a young mother decided her family's salvation lay in death.

Last April she placed her three children, aged 16, 10 and 2, in the family car and crashed head-on into a tree at 100km/h.

"I thought now was my opportunity - mainly for protection; not because I didn't love them, more that my mind had thought so much about all this evil," she told a psychiatrist in August.

"I had to protect them from being brainwashed ... the only way was to go to heaven."

Yesterday the Supreme Court found the woman, who cannot be identified, not guilty of attempted murder due to mental incompetence.

Acting Chief Justice Margaret Nyland made the ruling based on expert mental health reports which she later released to The Advertiser.