EXCLUSIVE

INFAMOUS incest family the Colts, who police found living in depraved circumstances in a filthy bush camp six years ago, have used Facebook to declare their love for each other as a family.

Matriarch Betty Colt has posted a picture of herself with family members with a superimposed message declaring “Love Makes a Family”.

Since they were split up by health and welfare authorities, members of the incest clan have continued to maintain contact via social media, at times with love hearts and wistful messages.

Colt, 50, has previously sworn to reunite the members of the family torn apart when shocked authorities uncovered them living in appalling conditions in country NSW.

It was a discovery that shocked the world — four generations of incestuous activity in a secret bush camp in the hills behind the tiny town of Boorowa.

A family of 38 adults and children were found living among incestuous relationships in filthy conditions without electricity, toilets or town plumbing.

Some of the children had stunted speech and misshapen features, and all slept in caravans, tents and tin sheds.

DNA testing would prove that 11 of the children in the camp were the product of a sexual relationship by their mothers with either a brother, father or other close male relative.

The children of the Colts — a court appointed pseudonym to protect the children’s identities — had never seen toilet paper and didn’t know how to clean their teeth.

From a young age, they allegedly engaged in sex with uncles, aunts or cousins.

Judge Peter Johnstone, president of the Children’s Court of NSW, was so disturbed by the case he decided to publish his findings.

Disclosures in Judge Johnstone’s 63-page report included those of Kimberly, then the 13-year-old daughter of Betty’s daughter Raylene.

Kimberly told a sexual health educator at Shellharbour Hospital about performing oral sex on Betty’s sons Bobby and Dwayne, her then underage uncles.

Kimberly also made a disclosure to the health educator that Dwayne had has sexual intercourse with her.

Following Judge Johnstone’s ruling, Betty Colt and some of her sisters and brothers and her daughter Raylene were forbidden from living with certain children and grandchildren.

Despite the ban, Betty has continued to post love hearts and wistful messages via social media.

Among the Facebook messages between the children and the adult relatives, one male teenager believed to be her son has superimposed Betty’s “Love Makes a Family” motto on a photograph of himself.

Other Colt family members including Martha’s son Karl have reposted the picture with the motto.

Martha, who is Betty’s younger sister, was found to have four children born from sexual relationships with either a father or brother.

Betty Colt’s Facebook posts about family include a post about what sort of mother she is and who in her family is her inspiration.

In Betty’s case the answer is her mother June Colt, who died in 2001. It is believed Betty’s father Tim Colt was the biological father of her eldest son.

Betty was due to be deported back to New Zealand — where the incest clan originated with her brother-and-sister grandparents — but lodged an appeal against the deportation order.

The entire Colt family is part of an ongoing investigation by the NSW Child Abuse Squad headed by Detective Chief Inspector Peter Yeomans.

Betty’s oldest child Tammy Colt, who police found in a Mildura caravan park living in a sexual relationship with her younger brother Derek, has entered a new relationship.

Tammy, who gave birth to three children by Derek, has since had a child with her new partner.

Two of Tammy and Derek Colt’s children were taken into care back in 2012, and a third child, Sally, died aged two months from the rare genetic disorder, Zellweger syndrome.

The mutative condition, resulting from having two closely related parents, causes abnormal features, which in baby Sally comprised of a thick short neck and lowset ears.

Tests of the child’s genomes found it was “essentially impossible” that Sally’s parents were not related.

One of the most depraved members of the Colt family was Betty’s sister Martha, five of whose six children were proven by DNA to have been born from an incestuous union.

Two of the boys, Jed and Karl, are now in their late teens and have moved to rural locations, but maintain contact with their Aunt Betty.

When police raided the family property in July 2012, Martha Colt was found to be sleeping with her brother Charlie in a tent.

What they uncovered profoundly disturbed welfare officers who immediately removed the children from the putrid camp.

Several of the children featured homozygous or identical gene characteristics, such as lowset ears, misaligned eyes and hearing loss.

Some could only walk in a shuffling gait, and could not speak intelligibly, read or write, count, or recognise numbers.

At least 12 of the children were from incestuous relationships over four generations descending from grandparents who were brother and sister.

They were undernourished, had developmental delays, extensively decayed teeth, fungal infections and had barely attended school.

Some of them displayed poor speech, low reasoning capacity, low-range working memory and an extremely low range of intelligence.

The family had moved from state to state and evaded detection until they moved to an unsewered bush block in the isolated hills behind the tiny town of Boorowa.

Unknown to the 2000 citizens of the farming community in a fertile valley amid the southwestern slopes of NSW, the dark family secret of multi-generational incest began to unravel in 2012.

It was a schoolyard revelation by one of the Colts who infrequently attended classes at a local school that triggered the raids.

One of the Colt children was overheard saying that “my sister is pregnant and we don’t know which of my brothers is the father”.

Weeks later, Boorowa farmers watched a convoy of police, health and social workers in four-wheel drives, a police bus and an ambulance drive up an old stock route through untamed scrub to the Colts’ block.

The Colt family set-up comprised of the five daughters and two sons of Tim and June Colt, with Betty the matriarch and mother of 13 children and four grandchildren.

DNA tests proved that five of Betty’s children were from incestuous relations with a parent, brother or uncle.

Betty was jailed in 2014 for trying to kidnap two of her children after they were taken into care.

At the time of the offences, Betty had contacted Bobby, 15, and Billy, 14, and incited them to escape from foster care and live with her again.

In bizarre conversations recorded by police and tendered to Moss Vale Local Court, Betty told Bobby he was “sexy” and “gorgeous”.

Court documents seen by news.com.au reveal she told Bobby, whose father was believed to be either Betty’s own father or brother, “I ain’t giving up until I get every one of you home.

“Pack your bags and I’ll be there. They can’t stop you. If they put a hand on you, charge them with assault.”

Following the Colt children’s removal from their parents, uncles and aunts, some of the young girls displayed sexualised behaviour in their new foster homes.

But the children reportedly made progress after being removed from their parents and taken into care.

In 2015, police took out a two year apprehended violence order (AVO) against Martha preventing her from contacting her daughters Nadia and Ruth, then aged 10 and eight.

Granting the order in Parramatta Local Court, Magistrate Margaret McGlynn said that “it is important the public be made aware of situations of this kind in which these children unfortunately found themselves ... children whose birth parents being siblings and many of their relatives being of incestuous relationships of some kind”.

Ms McGlynn cited the allegations of sexual activity between the children as documented in the NSW Children’s Court judgment.

Details included Nadia, just six years old when the family commune was uncovered, having sex with her brothers, and being photographed sexually by both her father and mother.

Parramatta Local Court documents revealed that Nadia and another child Ruth had disclosed to authorities that their brothers lined up to take turns having sexual relations with them while their parents were “watching and laughing”.

Since the two young girls were taken into care, they had gained weight, improved in their speech and hygiene and were “attending the local primary school which they love”.

According to court documents, when Martha visited the two girls she was heard to tell them not to speak to “outsiders” and “if they were asked about their family to say, ‘It’s none of your business.’”

Magistrate McGlynn said it was necessary the Colt children’s identities continue to be protected as they made friends at school and remained free from being judged.

“They not only have the obvious emotional scars, but physical ones as well ... being in new schools, having to make friends and to meet the approval of parents of those children.”

On February 19 this year, Betty Colt completed a Facebook quiz, “What kind of mother are you?”

She posted the quiz’s conclusion that “You’re a fun mum. Your children love you because there is never a dull moment with you around.

“You know how to have fun and that is something you have taught your children well.”