Parents who whipped their four children's bare feet with wooden slats after seeing torture method in war film jailed for four years



One boy only had bare maggot-infested mattress in his room

Children forced to go to toilet on their carpets

Mother told her husband: ‘Not on his legs, on his feet... it doesn’t leave bruises’

Judge Peter Fox called the abuse 'protracted negligence and ill-treatment together with a series of assaults verging on the sadistic'

A mother and father who tortured their four children and forced them to live in squalor have been jailed.

Judge Peter Fox described the couple as ‘verging on the sadistic’ after hearing how they whipped the bare soles of their boys' feet with wooden bed slats - a method of torture they saw used in a war film.

When police arrested their 36-year-old mother at the family’s home near Northallerton, North Yorkshire, she told them: ‘I was a f***ing horrible mother and they had a horrible dad. I can’t apologise to them enough, but sorry will never be enough.’

Teesside Crown Court heard that the children - aged between two and eight at the time - were locked in their bedrooms and were forced to go to the toilet on their carpets.

One of the boys only had a bare maggot-infested mattress in his room - which had no curtains, furnishings or light bulb.

After the abuse came to light, the boy told police: ‘It felt like being in prison, being locked in and being hit... it was dark and cold with rats and mice.’

Prosecutor David Brooke said that the parents, who cannot be named for legal reasons, used blue rope to tie shut the bedroom doors and put locks on some of them.

The court also heard allegations that the couple - now separated - used a belt, shoes, slippers, bed slats and a bamboo stick to beat the boys over the course of at least two years.

The children later told police their mother sometimes held them down while their father whipped the soles of their bare feet - what she called ‘Chinese torture’.

Weeks after seeing the punishment on a war film, the woman shouted at her husband when he hit one of the boys: ‘Not on his legs, on his feet... it doesn’t leave bruises.’

The couple were jailed for four years after admitting a string of cruelty and false imprisonment charges.

Matthew Gent, defending the 38-year-old father, told Judge Fox: ‘He accepts entirely that his behaviour was utterly despicable. He is disgusted with himself.’

Robert Mochrie, for the jobless mother, said her life descended into heavy drinking after a family tragedy, and she struggled to cope with the children.

The parents accused each other of instigating the abuse, but the judge ruled the mother was ‘at the bottom of this’ and her husband was initially a ‘weak’ follower.

However, he added: ‘You grew into this deplorable and disgraceful conduct and, indeed, perpetuated it when you had the children when you left your wife.’

Harrowing: Teesside Crown Court heard how the parents subjected their children to appalling abuse, including making them go to the toilet on the floor in their rooms

‘It was protracted negligence and ill-treatment together with a series of assaults verging on the sadistic.

‘They have recovered from the physical harm which you did to them, but the psychological harm is incalculable and how that will affect their lives cannot be more than mere speculation.’

Mr Brooke told the court that when police and social workers had visited the house they found filthy rooms with bedroom walls covered in faeces and a strong smell of urine.

When the extent of the cruelty emerged and the father was told his eldest son would be taken into care following a hospital admission, he replied: ‘Good, I don’t f***ing want him.’

Mr Mochrie said that the mother claimed she had been physically and sexually abused in the relationship, and her husband had duped social workers into thinking he was the reliable parent.

‘She felt isolated living in a relatively rural area with these children, and as she began to struggle to cope, the more alcohol she consumed - a sorry tale, indeed.

‘I cannot emphasise just how remorseful she is. Dare I quote what she said to me this morning. She said “there’s nothing the court can do to me that will make things worse”.’

Mr Gent told the court: ‘He is deeply ashamed and deeply regrets the way he has behaved, and has been extremely upset by the proceedings from the outset.