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ETCHED on the faces of these distraught young victims is utter disbelief and despair after the Dickensian foster mother who abused them escaped a jail term.

As Ruth Johnston walked free from court yesterday, devastated victim Thomas Timlin told her: “Hang your head in shame.”

The 61-year-old’s catalogue of cruelty included making a child lick urine from a carpet.

But she was given only 240 hours of community service as punishment for more than a decade of brutality.

Johnston physically and mentally tortured Rebecca Forrester, 19, Adele McGuire, 25, and 22-year-old twins Kevin and Thomas Timlin while they were aged between two and seven.

Adele sobbed: “The system betrayed us all those years ago and now the system has betrayed us again.

“We were small children and she abused us for years and only jail would have given us the justice we deserve.”

Paisley sheriff James Spy said he had reluctantly chosen not to jail Johnston. He told her: “This conviction is not only an

indictment of you but also of a system which placed vulnerable children in your foster care.”

Johnston’s solicitor said she maintained a “position of denial”.

Thomas said: “To hear her say sorry would be something but she will never say it.”

Johnston’s young victims conducted themselves with dignity as their ordeal unfolded during the trial.

She was found guilty of seven charges involving assault and willful ill-treatment.

Between 1991 and 2001, the youngsters were knocked to the ground, hit with a slipper, pinched until they bled, dragged by the hair, force-fed, put into icy showers and made to sit in the freezing garden for hours as a punishment.

One girl was made to run up and down the street in her nightdress. Another had her soiled sheets rubbed in her face. If anyone gave the children sweets, self-styled Christian Johnston would confiscate them and give them to her own kids.

Her church elder husband Gordon was cleared but he has lost his job and the couple have put their home in Paisley’s Dunchurch Road up for sale.

(Image: Phil Dye)

After yesterday’s sentencing, the victims gathered in a cafe near the court.

Kevin could not be there but the three sat holding hands, at times the girls weeping inconsolably. Thomas said: “The evidence didn’t reflect day-to-day living in that house. It was hell.”

Johnston once photographed Adele smiling with an Easter egg before taking it away. Adele said: “She is no Christian. I hope she rots in hell.”

Rebecca was placed with Johnston when she was two and endured constant cruelty there until she was eight. She said: “Years of abuse and she just walks away.

“I was hit several times a day. She’d hit me with her hand, a slipper or a newspaper. I got to feel it was normal.”

The foster kids were not allowed upstairs to use the toilet. It was reserved for the Johnstons. Like most of the children, Rebecca wet the bed.

One time, her urine-soaked clothes and sheets were rubbed in her face and she was forced to lick the soiled carpet.

She was then dragged upstairs by the hair and made to stand in a cold shower.

Another time, Rebecca was put in the garden as a punishment and not allowed back inside until bedtime.

Johnston began abusing the boys when they were three and continued until they left her when they were seven. They were beaten and locked out of the house.

In more than three years, Kevin was given two baths. But he was forced into a cold shower every three days.

The victims have not been paid by the Record for their story.