False imprisonment: Andrew Hunter and Lauren Pendlebury in vile offending

A Melbourne couple has been unmasked as abusive parents who forced their young son to sleep on the laundry floor without a blanket and a pillow as “punishment for being naughty”.

A Melbourne couple has been unmasked as vile and abusive parents.

A “cruel and inhumane” couple has been found guilty of false imprisonment after they forced their young son to sleep in the laundry for four consecutive nights during winter without a blanket and a pillow to punish him for being naughty.

Andrew Hunter, 47, and Lauren Pendlebury, 39, — who shared five children between them — fronted the County Court on Tuesday for sentencing on a charge of false imprisonment and the former on an additional charge of assault.

The couple’s cruelty was revealed after Hunter informed a worker at their son’s childcare centre of their actions and police were notified.

Judge George Georgiou said after Hunter had dropped off the child at his preschool on June 21, 2018 a female worker at the centre said, “The sun is out today, we might go outside to play. Does (your son) have a jumper in his bag?” Hunter said, “Yes, that would be good because he’ll need to warm his bones”. She asked what he meant by “warm his bones” and Hunter responded that his son was in the laundry last night. Upon further probing, Hunter said, “Well, he was a naughty boy, and that was his punishment”.

He further said “That’s the punishment for all the children. That’s the way she (Pendlebury) wants it.”

The worker saw the child was shivering and had injuries to his body. Hunter admitted his actions to police.

Andrew Hunter and Lauren Pendlebury were found guilty of false imprisonment.`

Pendlebury told Fawkner police she’d had enough of the boy’s bad behaviour, his lying, he’s taking his seatbelt off in the car, his toilet training got worse, and “just all sorts of things”.

A psychologist told the court Hunter suffered from psycho social distress from being unemployed and adjusting to living with your partner and five children when he ill-treated the child.

The psychologist considered Hunter was experiencing stress with limited ability to assert his or the child’s needs and appeared to have engaged in the behaviour to acquiesce his partner, prioritising fear around the loss of their relationship.

Judge Georgiou described their action as “cruel and inhumane”, saying neither of them could have considered the punishment as reasonable parental discipline.

“It is most difficult to understand that either of you could have considered this reasonable parental discipline. It was not.

“Neither of you appear to have any insight into how far beyond the realm of what is reasonable discipline this was, particularly you Mr Hunter.”

But the Judge did not consider jail to be the appropriate outcome, given the impact the removal of the couple’s five other children has had on them and the fact both did not have any previous convictions.

Hunter was sentenced to a 22-months Community Corrections Order and ordered to perform 120 hours of unpaid community work, while Pendlebury was slapped with a 15-month CCO must do 80 hours of community work.