Colt ‘incest’ clan member gets bail after jail sex assault
A member of the notorious Colt family has been granted bail after complaining of being sexually assaulted in prison.
NSW
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One of the women at the centre of Australia’s most infamous incest case has been granted bail after complaining she had been sexually assaulted behind bars.
The 43-year-old woman — given the court-ordered pseudonym Martha Colt — was arrested in April 2018 after an investigation uncovered horrific alleged child abuse.
Her arrest came nearly six years after stunned police found 40 relatives living in squalor on an isolated southern NSW farm, taking away 12 allegedly inbred children, some of whom could not speak intelligibly, use toilet paper or brush their teeth.
Martha, who is charged with six counts of perjury, yesterday appeared at the Supreme Court via video link with a bandaged left arm. Her barrister said she had been repeatedly attacked and was once sexually assaulted while locked up at Mary Wade prison in Lidcombe.
“She also suffers from a heart condition,” Hugh White said.
Prosecutor Katharine Jeffreys flagged concerns Martha may sway her cognitively-impaired children to change their evidence or flee the state if released.
“There’s a significant risk of interference with witnesses given their background, their disabilities and their susceptibility to coercion,” she said.
Martha must report twice daily to the township’s local police station, which the court heard is not manned 24 hours per day but has a phone from which the defendant can remotely report to Griffith’s cop shop located 110km away.
Justice Helen Wilson also ordered Martha to make the hour-long journey to Griffith twice weekly to report to officers in person “so that there was at least some capacity to monitor her.”
Justice Helen Wilson said these concerns were “well founded” but noted any sentence imposed on Martha if convicted would not exceed the near two-year period she will have spent in custody awaiting her February 2020 trial.
Instead, Martha was freed on $2000 bail, banned from leaving NSW or contacting “certain people” and ordered to live with an elderly couple in the state’s west.
The octogenarian owner of the Hillston property agreed to forfeit $100 if Martha absconds from court appearances and vowed to alert cops if she runs away. Martha must also report to police twice daily.
Three other female Colts are facing similar charges and have already been granted bail ahead of their joint three-month trial while four male Colts are behind bars awaiting a separate joint trial early next year.