I Just found this very disturbing new article. Here’s the link, but these links don’t last long on the Mail’s site, so here is the text if the link goes down:
Article: A foster mother who subjected three children in her care to a "horrifying catalogue of cruel and sadistic treatment" has been jailed for 14 years.
Eunice Spry, 62, routinely beat, abused and starved the vulnerable youngsters over a 19-year period. The devout Jehovah's Witness forced sticks down their throats and made them eat their own vomit and rat excrement.
As punishment for misbehaving, she would beat them on the soles of their feet and force them to drink washing-up liquid and bleach. She even confined one girl to a wheelchair for three years after a car crash in a cynical bid to maximise compensation for the accident.
Spry staunchly denied all the claims made against her and insisted the only physical punishment she ever used was "a smack on the bottom". But a jury at Bristol Crown Court convicted her of 26 charges, ranging from unlawful wounding, cruelty to a person under 16, assault occasioning actual bodily harm, perverting the course of justice and witness intimidation.
Judge Simon Darwall-Smith told Spry that this was the worst case he had come across in 40 years in law. [Picture of bloodied hands: The child's hand has been rubbed raw with sandpaper]
He told her: "Frankly, it's difficult for anyone to understand how any human being could have even contemplated what you did, let alone with the regularity and premeditation you employed."
During the four-week trial the jury heard harrowing evidence of how Spry subjected the children to a regime of abuse. The three victims, known as Victim A, B and C, all gave evidence describing how their daily routines were punctuated by random acts of bizarre and sadistic violence at the hands of their foster mother.
Victim A told the court how she was confined to a wheelchair by Spry for over three years, after being injured in a car crash in 2000. Spry had tried to stop her from trying to walk again, in a cynical bid to maximise the compensation payout she could get from insurers.
[Face injuries photo of Victim A]
The woman, now aged 21, eventually fled from her foster mother and walked on the very same day. Victim B, also 21, told how her foster mother would pull her hair and shove her face in her pet dog's faeces as punishment. Victim C, now 18, described how his foster mother held his hand down on a hot electric hob until it was left looking like a "gooey mess". He said he had been force-fed so much washing up liquid by Spry that he could now differentiate between the brands on taste alone.
They were made to eat lard and if they were sick, would be forced to eat what they had thrown up. Spry would regularly beat the children on the soles of the feet with a "variety of sticks". They called it home: Spry's foster children lived in squalor, with little in the way of comforts
[picture of filthy room and pile of filthy clothes]
They would be "punched kicked and strangled", and if they cried the sticks would be forced down their throats. The offences took place in two of Spry's homes in Gloucestershire between 1986 and 2005. The abuse was finally discovered after another Jehovah's Witness secretly confronted Victim A about marks to her head caused when Spry rubbed sandpaper over her face.
Victim A plucked up the courage to report her foster mother to the police who quickly interviewed Victim B and C. The bedrooms in which Eunice Spry's foster children slept were strewn with rubbish. Spry was able to conceal her alleged reign of abuse as the children were home-taught and not sent to school. She also covered her tracks by forbidding them to be examined on their own by doctors or dentists.
Spry maintained her innocence throughout police interviews and during the subsequent trial. Labour MP Dan Norris, a former child protection worker, welcomed today's sentencing. The MP for Wansdyke said: "I am very glad that the judge has seen the seriousness of this crime in his sentencing. "I believe she has been able to fool everyone in our society for more than 20 years so I am glad she has not fooled the jury or the judge in this tragic case of horrendous cruelty."
Nigel Mitchell, defending, said that despite the brutality and pain Spry had inflicted on the three children, there had been genuine moments of happiness and love shown towards them. "In amongst the periods of unpleasantness and violence, there were also periods of happiness. Your Honour will recall long canal trips on the barge, trips to Florida, the Florida Keys, Disney, matters of that sort interspersed with these other matters that we are all too familiar with."
Mr Mitchell also revealed that Spry had needed protection in prison following her convictions and it was a "particularly unpleasant" place for her. Spry remained impassive as the judge sentenced her to 14 years. He also ordered her to pay costs of £80,000, which he said would inevitably mean she would have to sell at least one of her two properties in Gloucestershire.
Edited by Lady Lee to provide warning to some who may have difficulties reading the above