BETTY Colt, the infamous woman at the centre of Australia’s most shocking incest case has been jailed for 12 months.

She will have to spend nine months in jail before the chance of parole.

Colt, 48, was found guilty in September of trying to kidnap back her children from foster carers. The children had been taken away by authorities after the incest investigation began.

As well as the attempted abduction charges they Ms Colt was found guilty of recruiting another son to commit a criminal act. Police allege she wanted the son, named ‘Bobby’, 16, by the court, to help her abduct his brother Billy, 15, from his foster mother.

She smuggled the children a mobile phone and charger to open a secret line of communication during limited contacts meetings.

This morning prosecutor Sarma Rumbachs asked magistrate Mary Ryan at Moss Vale District Court to consider a jail sentence.

Magistrate Ryan told Colt there was no alternative to jail because she showed little regard for court orders and her children needed to be protected.

She said Colt was willing to allow her children back into an abusive and neglectful environment.

An apprehended violence order (AVO) was also issued against her, banning her from contact with 14 people. It’s thought the majority of those people are her children, who are alleged to have been fathered by close relatives.

Colt was led from the court crying and in handcuffs.

“Betty Colt” is a name given to her by the courts to protect the identity of her children.

In September Magistrate Ryan found her guilty of all three charges, hers being the first criminal conviction to come from the investigation into the incest case that shocked Australia and made headlines around the world.

“Betty Colt took advantage of her sons,” Magistrate Ryan said. “Betty Colt continued assertion that they could leave (their foster carers) when they were 16 was an act of wilful blindness. She persisted in the lie.”

In doing so she had blatant disregard for the decision of the Children’s Court and wanted to restore the “status quo” of the family before authorities intervened, the magistrate said.

Ms Colt’s lawyer Phil Carey argued the plan wasn’t kidnapping as the boy didn’t voice a clear lack of consent.

But the magistrate agreed with the police version of events.

Her plan was to take her children to South Australia and have them work as fruit pickers to earn money.

Doing so was not only trying to use them for financial gain but influence them in relation to the ongoing investigation.

Ms Colt was alleged to have told her son Bobby “not to talk to anyone” and that they “don’t know who your father is”, The Daily Telegraph reported.

The court heard both Billy and Bobby had shown great improvement in both their health and personal hygiene since they were taken away from their mother — but she was determined to get them back, partly to get even with authorities.

Colt was released on bail after that hearing and was supported in court by daughter “Raylene” who allegedly had a child with her relative.

Her real identity has been suppressed and the name ‘Colt’ was given to her by the court to protect the identities of her children.

Police raided the Colt family home in rural south-western New South Wales in July 2012 after a teacher alerted authorities to a conversation overheard in the playground that detailed the incest.

The exact location of their home is suppressed by a court order.

The conversation that shocked the teacher — and triggered the police investigation — was: “My sister is pregnant and we don’t know which of my brothers is the father.”

The raid on the isolated farm was carried out by police and the Department of Family and Community Services and uncovered the most shocking case of incest Australia has ever seen.

The raids found 38 adults and children living in filthy caravans and tin sheds without electricity, town water or any plumbing. They were the result of four generations from grandparents who were brother and sister.

In 2012 after the Colt family were discovered some children were placed with foster families, others put in treatment programs for sexualised behaviour and psychological trauma. They have had some contact with their parents and siblings.

READ: The secret life inside the depraved family who live in the hills of a quiet country town

The public first became aware of the shocking case when the Children’s Court, in a rare move, released its findings that led to 12 children being placed in care.

Despite several at-risk reports by authorities into the family it wasn’t until the teacher came forward that action was taken.

When the raid occurred Betty Colt was found sharing a marital bed with her brother Charlie and her children, same only as young as 10, were the result of sex between Ms Colt and her brother, father or another close male relative.

The five family groups comprised of sisters, Rhonda, 47, Martha, 33, and Betty Colt, 46, who slept every night with her brother, Charlie. Two of Betty’s daughters who each had children were proved to be from unions of related parents.

Charlie Colt fled to the UK in June after fearing he would never get a fair trial in Australia. In an exclusive interview he told the Daily Telegraph he’d never abused anyone in his life.

“I love my whole family dearly, but not sexually. I think it’s absolutely disgusting, it’s wrong, it’s against everything we were brought up with.”

Despite genetic testing revealing at least 14 Colt children had parents who were related, Charlie dismissed that as “absolute rubbish”.

The Daily Telegraph reported the Children’s Court was told that the sister, given the pseudonym Tammy Colt, 29, gave birth to her baby Sally, who died within two months from a fatal genetic disorder known as Zellweger Syndrome. Sally was born “extremely dysmorphic” with the thick short neck and lowset ears typical of the syndrome.

The father was not named on the birth certificate but Tammy has since told counsellors she had been having a relationship for three years with a younger brother.

Genetic testing on the baby girl showed the genetic abnormalities existed as a result of incest and it is believed both parents are carriers of the genetic disease.

A doctor made an appointment for Tammy and her mother, Betty Colt, to see her to warn them of the dangers but neither of them turned up.

AUSTRALIA’S WORST INCEST CASE

Eight of the Colt children have parents who were either brother and sister, mother and son or father and daughter.

A further six have parents who were either aunt and nephew, uncle and niece, half siblings or grandparents and grandchild.

Interviews with the Colts revealed the family saga began back in New Zealand, in the first half of last century when June Colt was born to parents who were brother and sister.

June married Tim and in the 1970s the couple emigrated to Australia.

The family would then move, several times, between South Australia, Western Australia, and Victoria, usually living in remote rural communities, shying away from public knowledge about the truth.

Tim and June gave birth to four daughters and two sons.

Three of the daughters — Rhonda, 47, Betty, 46, and Martha, 33, and at least one of the sons, Charlie, form the elder members of the family group in the NSW bush camp.

Betty had 13 children.

She contended their father was a man called Phil Walton, now dead, who was known to the family as Tim.

But genetics show one of her children, Bobby, 15, was fathered either by her father, whose name was Tim, or the brother she was sleeping with.

Four more of Betty’s children were fathered by a close family member.

Betty’s eldest child, Raylene, now aged 30, has a 13-year-old daughter, Kimberly.

Raylene insists Kimberly’s father is a man called Sven, from Sweden or Switzerland.

Testing identifies Kimberly’s father as either her half brother, an uncle or a grandfather.

Betty’s second oldest child, Tammy, now aged 27, has given birth to three daughters, one of whom died from a rare genetic disorder, and all of whom, she eventually admitted, were fathered by her closest brother, Derek, 25.

Betty’s younger sister, Martha Colt, 33, has five children, four of whom were fathered by her own father, Tim, or by her brother, and another who is the product of a union with a close relation.

It was the 10 youngest of Betty and Martha’s children, and Raylene’s daughter, Kimberly, 13, who ran wild in a sexual spree about the property.

Betty’s children, Bobby, 15, Billy, 14, Brian, 12, Dwayne, 9, and Carmen, 8, all have parents who are close family members.

Martha’s children, Albert, 15, Jed, 14, Ruth, 9, and Nadia, 7, are also the product of closely-related parents.

DEPRAVED SECRETS

Court documents obtained by news.com.au revealed the shocking extent of the conditions the family lived in although a court order forbids reporting exactly where they lived.

• Exposed electric wires, bags of rubbish and chainsaws lay about.

• There were no toilets, showers or baths.

• The children were unwashed and wore dirty clothes.

• They were shy and made little eye contact.

• Few were capable of intelligible speech; almost all had fungal infections in their feet.

• Some had oddly-formed features, which scientific tests would later reveal was a result of “homozygosity” or identical gene patterns of both of the children’s parents.

The children were sexually involved with each other and only one, the youngest, a five-year-old girl, had parents who weren’t related.

Police and welfare officers saw a social time bomb exploding before their eyes with one officer reportedly saying she would never get over it or forget it.