Colt incest family’s secret videos show claims by children of torture
EXCLUSIVE: Secret videos made by the children of the infamous Colt incest family feature claims they are being tortured.
EXCLUSIVE
SECRET videos featuring the children of the infamous Colt incest family reveal claims of violence and murder threats while in care.
The online videos, obtained exclusively by news.com.au, have been recorded by five of the boys removed from the Colt clan after it was revealed they were the product of incestuous relationships. The boys are the sons of Colt family matriarch Betty and her sister Martha. Martha’s five children were all the result of relations with a brother, father or other relative.
The recordings contain allegations of beatings while in foster care or residential homes, and claims of threats to kill the Colt family.
The five Colt boys who recorded the videos — now aged between 13 and 18 — were taken into foster or residential care in 2012 after being removed from the incest clan.
All five who feature in the videos have at one point expressed to authorities their desire to be restored to the care of their mothers.
In the videos, the boys claim they have been “bashed”, “beaten up”, given “a hiding ... for not washing properly”.
They say they have been threatened with “a bikie gang”, that their family will be killed and have been threatened with being stabbed or murdered.
Several of the recordings are hard to understand. Some of the children were found to have stunted speech when the Colt’s squalid rural NSW camp was discovered in 2012.
The living area of the farm “smelt of urine and faeces” which lay in open buckets among the sleeping areas, and was also populated by about 20 dogs.
The five boys who made the video recordings — Billy, Brian, Karl, Jed and Dwayne Colt — had fungal infections, decayed teeth and misaligned eyes or misshapen features when found in the hills in the tiny hamlet of Boorowa.
The videos are made under the boys’ real names, which news.com.au has removed and substituted with their court-appointed pseudonyms, as required under NSW law.
However, news.com.au can reveal the tragic individual case histories of each boy as a result of their putrid living conditions, depraved family culture and “homozygosity”, or identical gene patterns of their parents.
The children among the 38 Colt family members living on the filthy remote property did not know how to use toilet paper, a toothbrush or shower, and had bed-wetting and hearing problems.
They were years behind at school if they had attended at all, they tortured the genitalia of animals and had sex on the farm with their cousins, uncles and aunts.
Online, Martha Colt has posted a comment on one of the videos of one of the boys saying he was getting “a beating for having a weak bladder”.
Martha, 38, is one of the eight adult members of the Colts arrested earlier this month, when the NSW State Crime Command’s Child Abuse and Sex Crimes Squad executed warrants in three different states.
Along with Betty Colt, 51, three of their siblings, and Betty’s daughter Raylene and her nephew are now in custody in NSW facing charges.
Among the charges levelled at the Colt males are sexual intercourse with a child under 10, incest, indecent assault, and sexual intercourse with a child under 14.
As revealed exclusively by news.com.au, the Colt family matriarch Betty had been promoting family values on Facebook with a motto “Love makes a family” before the arrests.
In the recordings by the Colt children, Betty’s son Billy Colt claims that while in residential care people “threaten they’re going to kill my family”.
“They’re gonna kill us,” Billy said, staring into the camera.
“They said if we phone anyone or the police they’re going to stab us and all that.
“They’re gonna send a bikie gang. They’re gonna run us over with a car.”
Billy and his older brother Bobby were the subject of an aborted kidnap attempt from care by mother Betty in 2013.
In phone conversations between Betty and Bobby, she said she was going to take them from care off to South Australia, where Betty was arrested this month.
In one conversation, Betty told Bobby his voice is “sexy” and that she couldn’t wait to be reunited with him and Billy.
She told Bobby that the boys could be restored to her care when they turned 16, rather than 18.
The brothers were taken into care in rural NSW together with their cousins, Martha’s sons Jed and Karl, after authorities removed 12 of the Colt children six years ago.
Betty’s sons Brian and Dwayne were placed with Martha’s son Albert, although Albert was removed later due to his behaviour.
Martha posted on Facebook two years ago a plaintive message with her mobile number and a photograph of Albert saying she was “still looking” for him.
All videos featuring Billy, Jed, Karl, Dwayne and Brian were filmed in early December 2016 in front of the same brick wall.
They were posted online by Martha Colt, who wrote on Facebook: “I can only hope these boys can get the help they need to put a stop abuse [sic].”
She also posted alongside the video made by her son Karl: “It is sad to hear how this young boy gets a beating for having a weak bladder shawley [sic] they realise it is the beating that is causing it.”
Below is a summary of each Colt boy’s video and their individual cases.
The NSW Department of Family and Community Services (FACS) said in response to the allegations made by the Colt boys that it “is continuing to work closely with NSW Police and non-government partners in relation to this family”.
KARL COLT
Now aged 17, Karl is the third of Martha Colt’s five children, who are all the result of an incestuous union.
His DNA test showed it was likely he was the product of Martha’s relationship with a half-sibling, uncle, nephew or grandparent.
When Karl was taken from the filthy farm at Boorowa, his mother Martha and uncle Charlie shared the same bed in one of two tents inside a large shed which had a refrigerator with rotten vegetables and hazardous wires up to a generator.
Martha and Charlie were arrested earlier this month in the NSW town of Griffith.
See the exclusive pictures from the Colt clan family album
Karl was found to be very underweight, had fungal infections in his toenails and “walked in a shuffling fashion”.
He needed urgent dental work, had limited reading skills, his speech was “not understandable”, he had a hearing impairment, and reportedly had sex with his younger sister Ruth.
After being taken into care, he threatened to stab staff with pencils, and to cut their throats.
On his online video, wearing a black hat and shirt, Karl speaks for 43 seconds in a hesitant voice, sometimes indistinct.
He says: “I got threatened and I got bashed.
“I got a hiding ... foot on the backside of head.
“Sad, angry ... tell me to shut up and it’s, um, sad and not fair.”
JED COLT
Martha’s second son is now aged over 18 years old.
His parents are closely related, either brother and sister or father and daughter.
The Children’s Court of NSW report on the Colt family alleged Jed had admitted to having oral sex with his younger sister Ruth. When the report was published, Jed was 14 while Ruth was just seven.
On being removed from the Colt camp in 2012, Jed presented with a bacterial infection on the soles of his feet, a tongue infection and fungal infections in his toes.
He had a severe hearing impairment, “needed encouragement in respect of personal hygiene” and urgent dental work.
“He was reported to be wetting his bed. His speech was not understandable. He presented as cognitively impaired. He had limited reading skills,” the Children’s Court report read.
Jed and Karl disclosed to their carers that they used to torture animals at the farm, including puppies and cats. They reported mutilating the genitalia of animals.
In the online video, which is the longest of the Colt boys’ recordings, Jed’s diction is so indistinct as to be like a dialect rather than English.
He talks about it being “tough”, someone “wanted money” and “the boys”, saying “why make the boys upset”.
BRIAN COLT
Brian is Betty Colt’s eleventh child, now aged over 17 years old.
He was taken from the farm where the children and adults dwelt in four living areas, including two dirt-caked caravans with cigarette butts on the floor and broken windows.
He had fungal infections, gum disease and did not understand showering.
He had extensively decayed teeth, borderline normal hearing and his eyes were misaligned.
When he first presented at school he could not read or write, count, or recognise numbers.
His cognitive capacity was in the extremely low range of intelligence, and he demonstrated considerable academic delay.
Taken into care, he and brother Dwayne tied up their carers’ 18 year-old granddaughter with ribbons.
In his online video, Brian is wearing a white and black shirt and casting his eyes nervously away from the camera as he speaks.
He says: “I always get threatened, get beaten up, threatened to get killed, always get threatened about the family.
“Don’t always get much food. Always beat up on the little guys ... constantly always threatening they going to stab us, going to kill us.
“We’re telling our story what happens in care.”
DWAYNE COLT
Dwayne Colt is Betty’s second youngest child, now aged over 13.
After being taken into care at the age of eight, Dwayne told workers that he watched his brothers and cousins play with themselves using “rudey books”.
He also said that he had sex with an eight-year-old girl in the toilets behind the primary school.
The Children’s Court report claimed he had intercourse with his sister who was a year younger.
Dwayne told his carers that he and his siblings were told never to tell anyone that his father was in fact Betty Colt’s father, as Betty Colt would go to jail because her father had started having sex with her when she was 12.
Cytogenetic testing revealed Dwayne’s father was a relative of Betty.
After his placement in care, authorities recommended he be treated for sexualised behaviour and, like his brothers Billy, Bobby and Brian, have no further contact with their cousin Cindy (now aged around nine).
In his online video, Dwayne wears a back to front cap and a white jacket over a black T-shirt. He constantly looks away from the camera and speaks in a timid voice.
He says: “We get bashed. It’s wrong. I hate it.”
He also says he gets assaulted for “not washing properly”.
BILLY COLT
Billy is now over 18 years old, and Betty’s tenth child. His father is not as close a relation as that of his older brother Bobby.
Carers were told by Billy’s young relatives that he and Bobby had sexually abused girls on the farm and both brothers admitted to mutilating animals.
His younger sister said that he, Brian and Dwayne had taken her and their niece Kimberly into the bush and tied them to a tree and taken their clothes off.
When found and removed by authorities, Billy had a skin condition, fungal toenail infections, required urgent dental work, had mild hearing loss and his speech was not understandable.
He had a moderate intellectual disability, with poor spelling, reading, verbal and numeracy skills.
Billy’s video contains the most detailed allegations and is the most distinct, indicating his speech has improved.
After saying staff “threatened us” to kill, stab, or send a bikie gang, Billy says: “They’re gonna run us over with a car.”
He then says he and others have escaped from care.
“They’re still looking for us. We took off from care.
“They’re after us still. They wanna kill us now or they gonna give us a hiding.”
He said someone had squashed “my head on the ground. Just threw me to the wall.
“I don’t like it.
“They’re going to kill my family, my brothers and that.
“I have to [indistinct] them from care and run bush.
“Now we live in the bush. Safe. And scared.
“They’re after you and we don’t know what to do.”
Before moving to the Boorowa farm, the Colt family lived in remote parts of Western Australia and South Australia, where six family members were arrested this month and returned to NSW.
All of the 12 Colt children who were removed from the farm in 2012 were taken into care in NSW until they reach the age of 18.
In 2014, NSW police took out two AVOs against Martha Colt on behalf of her youngest children Ruth, 10, and Nadia, 8.
At the time, Magistrate Margaret McGlynn said the Colt children’s identities needed 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,” she told Parramatta Local Court.
In March 2016, Martha Colt posted on Facebook a picture of her eldest child Albert, then aged about 17, with the plea: “Please help me find my son.”
“To my dear son [boy’s real name] you asked me to come and find you I have looked everywhere and I am still looking,” she wrote.
I am now very worried about you if you see this please call me on [mobile number] Love Mum.”
The NSW FACS department said that “to ensure the privacy of the children, FACS is unable to comment further on this matter”.
Originally published as Colt incest family’s secret videos show claims by children of torture
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