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“I’m really and truly sorry. I didn’t mean for this to happen… I understand how wrong all of this was,” the accused said in a brief statement to the court, noting if she found herself in similar circumstances in future, she would seek help. “This will never happen again, ever.”

The campaign of “inordinate cruelty and inhumanity” began in late 2009, when the victim and two accused were living together in a Toronto apartment complex. The woman’s new boyfriend engaged in escalating violence against the other man, stomping him with steel-toed boots, slicing him with razor blades, setting his genitals on fire and placing straight pins through his lips to silence his screams.

To “treat” the devastating wounds, the male accused would sew them shut with a needle and thread, or apply a red-hot knife.

“[The victim’s wife] could have done so many things so easily to stop this, and she never did,” Mr. Leishman said.

Both accused, who cannot be named under a publication ban imposed to protect the victim’s identity, have pleaded guilty to aggravated assault and related charges. The man will be sentenced separately later this year.

The court heard that the victim suffered lasting physical and psychological injuries, including brain damage and crippling depression. The abuse changed his appearance so severely that when she first encountered him at the airport after his police rescue, his own mother did not recognize him.

“I walked past him three times,” she said in a victim-impact statement filed Thursday. “I went into the washroom to fall apart… I kept thinking how could he be alive with all the cuts and burns.”

Superior Court Justice John McMahon interjected several times Thursday to express concern over why the woman failed to alert authorities despite repeated chances to do so, and why she sometimes opted — apparently of her own volition — to sit by and watch the various tortures unfold.

“Her lack of empathy throughout this is troubling,” Judge McMahon said. He will pass sentence May 30.

National Post