Colt incest family: Tearful foster mum opens up on ‘filthy, dirty girl’
A foster carer who took in children rescued from a notorious NSW family accused of incest has tearfully said one six-year-old girl “didn’t know what the toilet was. She did not know what a toothbrush was.”
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- Alleged Colt incest dad ‘laughed’ as he attacked daughter: Court
- ‘My aunts, uncles, cousins have been sleeping together’
The foster carer who took in children from a notorious NSW family accused of horrific incest and child abuse spanning generations has broken down in tears describing the moment they first turned up on her doorstep.
The foster mother told a Sydney court one illiterate six-year-old girl from the infamous Colt family had never taken a bath when she was removed from a squalid farm eight years ago.
“She was filthy dirty… her hair felt like steel wool,” the woman, who cannot be named, told Downing Centre District Court.
“She didn’t know what the toilet was. She did not know what a toothbrush was.”
A dozen malnourished, inbred kids were taken by government child welfare workers from the isolated southern NSW property where nearly 40 relatives were living in 2012.
The neglected youngsters, aged four to 14, lived in a shanty commune in the Boorowa region without electricity or plumbing, and they had multiple physical and intellectual problems.
The foster mum cried as she told the court Nadia Colt and her nine-year-old sister could not read or write and did not know how to use a knife and fork when they first met.
The woman said Nadia had dirt ingrained into hands and feet, but “we gave her a bubble bath and she didn’t know what it was.”
The foster mum was giving evidence at the trial of Charlie Colt, who has pleaded not guilty to sexual intercourse with a child under the age of 10.
She told the court that Nadia had just taken a bath at her new home in November 2012 when she revealed that her father raped her with “a stick” when they lived on the farm.
“I was quite shocked and I fell back onto the lounge and nearly squashed my cat,” she said.
“I said “his wee stick?” and she said yes. She said she screamed really loud, because it hurt. Nadia said everyone heard her scream.”
The now 14-year-old, whose alleged dad Charlie and mother Martha Colt are brother and sister, told police at the time that her underage brothers also abused her in a tent.
Charlie denies fathering and raping the girl, or that he lived with his sister and their five children in two tents on the farm.
The trial continues.