The court is ­considering an appeal against the sentence given to a Townsville woman who helped her boyfriend rape her child, reports the Queensland Times.

Earlier this month a 39-year-old woman pleaded guilty to charges of rape and indecent treatment of a lineal descendant in the Townsville District Court, Australia.

She had held down her screaming daughter while her boyfriend raped the child on her 12th ­birthday.

The mother was sentenced to five years’ jail for the rape and three years’ jail for the indecent treatment charge, but both terms were immediately suspended, allowing her to walk free.

A spokesman for Attorney-General Yvette D’Ath said she was waiting for advice from the Director of Public Prosecutions on the case.

An online petition to the Director of Public Prosecutions, titled ‘Harsher penalty for horrendous crimes against children’, has ­attracted 199,485 supporters.

Crown prosecutor Andrew Walklate said in 2007 the woman’s boyfriend of eight years told her he had been having a sexual relationship with her then 11-year-old daughter for a number of years.

Walklate said the man had been sexually abusing the girl from the time she turned five and that when the woman threatened to report him to police, he promised never to touch the child again.

But four months later, in the early hours of the girl’s 12th birthday, she was dragged from her bed to her mother’s room and raped by the man while her mother held her legs open.