Incest family’s trial split into two as accused clan defend shocking charges
The shocking alleged incest of a family living on a filthy farm in NSW that stretched back four generations will be revealed in court.
EXCLUSIVE
The Colt accused incest family will be split into separate trials as three of the senior inbred clan males face multiple charges of sex with children and inciting indecency among their young relatives.
Sensational allegations of what allegedly happened on the clan’s secret filthy farm in the hills behind a NSW country town will be tested at two trials in the state’s District Court.
Four women, including the matriarch of a family alleged to have engaged in incest going back four generations, will go to trial first on perjury charges.
Matriarch Betty Colt, who reportedly had incestuous sexual relations with her own father Tim, is facing five charges of making a false statement on oath amounting to perjury.
The charges relate to her allegedly trying to conceal the paternity of her children.
Betty’s sister Martha, five of whose children DNA tested to being the product of closely related parents, is charged with six counts of perjury.
Betty’s sister Rhonda and daughter Raylene also face one charge each of perjury.
All family members were given court-appointed “Colt” pseudonyms by NSW Children’s Court president, Judge Peter Johnstone, in a 2013 judgment to protect the children’s identities.
The brother of Betty, Charlie Colt, who slept in a “marital bed” with his sister Martha on the remote squalid bush block, will go on trial at a later date on 27 charges.
The charges include six of sexual intercourse with a child under 10 years, four of indecent assault with a person under 16, and 12 of inciting aggravated indecency of a person under 16 while in authority.
Three of Charlie’s male relatives, including two men believed to be his nephews, will face court as his co-accused.
Cliff Colt faces 21 charges including four of sexual intercourse with a child under 10 years, and 12 of inciting aggravated indecency of a person under 16 while in authority.
Roderick Colt faces 19 charges including two of aggravated sexual intercourse with a person aged between ten and 14, and one of sexual intercourse without consent.
He also is charged with 12 counts of inciting aggravated indecency of a person under 16 while in authority.
Another male Colt faces two charges of incest with a person around 16 years old under the authority of the alleged offender.
The claims about what the accused incest family did on their squalid bush block include
that Colt family “adults engaged in encouraging children who were related to one another to engage in sexual acts”.
Colt children, some of whom were found on the farm to be malformed, impaired and devoid of hygiene, will testify at a closed prerecorded evidence hearing next month.
Some children spoke in unintelligible speech, walked in a shuffling fashion, didn’t know how to bathe or clean their rotting teeth and used the bush as their only toilet.
District Court Judge Kate Traill and Judge Gina O’Rourke will hold the hearings under the Child Sexual Offence Evidence Program Scheme which began in August this year.
Judge Traill will hear evidence of allegedly high levels of intra-familial sexual activity encouraged among cognitively-impaired and neglected children.
Three young male Colt family members, who have since become adults, will travel from interstate to testify.
The alleged offences occurred in the years before the Colt clan was broken up, on July 18, 2012, when a convoy of police, welfare workers and paramedics arrived at the family’s scrubland camp.
For generations, the Colts’ secret life of alleged inbred sexual relations between brothers and sisters, uncles and nieces and fathers and daughters had gone unchecked.
Betty’s parents, Tim and June, took the clan from state to state, avoiding detection.
Betty Colt later disclosed that June’s parents were brother and sister.
As one of Betty’s 13 children, son Dwayne, later revealed when he was taken into care, her father Tim Colt had started having sex with her when she was 12 years old.
Dwayne, whose DNA test revealed that along with four other of Betty’s children he was the product of inbreeding, allegedly told carers his father was Betty’s father.
On “the day of removal” more than seven years ago at the farm outside Boorowa, near Yass NSW, authorities discovered the Colt children in allegedly shocking conditions.
Several had never used a toothbrush or toilet paper.
Many of them had avoided school, had developmental delays, cognitive impairments and physical deformities associated with inbreeding such as low-slung ears and misaligned facial features.
Detectives from the State Crime Command’s Child Abuse and Sex Crimes Squad established Strike Force Hermoyne to investigate allegations of incest, child sexual assault, and serious neglect of children in the family.
In April 2018, squad members arrested eight Colt family members in raids across NSW, South Australia and Western Australia.
The trial for the four accused female Colt family members will start on February 10 next year, before Judge O’Rourke.
The trial for the four male accused will follow.