A West Australian couple has been sentenced over the extreme corporal punishment they inflicted on their young daughter over 30 years ago that included chaining her to a bed, whipping her with electrical wire, beating her with a piece of poly pipe and holding her underwater.
The woman, 64, and the man, 58 – who cannot be named to protect the identity of their victim – were sentenced last Friday for a range of offences including assault occasioning bodily harm and deprivation of liberty in relation to the woman’s daughter and the man’s stepdaughter.
They were sentenced in Perth District Court.Credit: Elliahn Blenkinsop
The offences occurred on the man’s farm in southern WA over a period of five years in the early 1990s. The victim was aged between seven and 12 years old at the time.
During the sentencing on Friday, the court was told the woman was a divorced single mother when she met and married her co-accused, and moved to his family’s property.
While they lived there, the girl, who attended court to hear the sentencing outcome, was subjected to years of sustained and deliberate acts of violence by both adults that has left her with lasting injuries, scars and psychological trauma.
In sentencing the couple, Judge John Staude outlined details of the assaults, which included the victim being punched repeatedly in the face and hit with a belt by each adult as they took turns, leaving her with painful welts on her back and buttocks.
However, the more serious offending, Staude said, was when the girl was locked in a small room with no bedding or clothing and just a bucket for a toilet for long periods of time. Initially, she would escape from a window until the couple bolted and nailed it shut, Staude said.
Then they would use a padlock and chain to tie her to the bed.
On one occasion, the woman hit her daughter in the forehead with a motorcycle stand that left a three-centimetre cut. The girl recalled her step-father sewing it up with a needle and thread.
On multiple occasions the victim was picked up by both offenders and “dunked” into a barrel of water that was used as the overflow for a water tank. She was aged between nine and 11 years old and was submerged so that she was unable to breathe and held under until she stopped struggling.
The girl said she would pretend to be unconscious so that they would stop.
The worst of the offences, Staude said, involved the use of electrical cabling to tie the girl to a chair in her bedroom after she had tried to run away. She was then whipped repeatedly by both parents for over an hour with electrical wire causing painful lacerations and bruising.
On another occasion, the girl says her step-father stamped on her foot so hard that it broke and that he would often beat her with a length of poly pipe as a form of punishment.
She told police the family were in their car driving to church in Denmark one day when another child in the car would not stop crying.
The girl attempted to calm the other child down, which enraged the man. He asked her to lean forward, leant behind and slapped her so hard she was left with bruises.
The victim wrote a statement of the offences years later when she was 23 years old, but the couple were not charged until years later, after she had recorded them both in phone calls admitting to some of the offending.
They were originally charged with 22 offences against her which they pleaded not guilty to, with the matter set down for trial in Albany earlier this year.
However, they both accepted a plea deal days before the trial was due to start, which meant they would plead guilty to some of the offences if the others were dropped.
Staude outlined in detail, however, that the offences they were being sentenced over were a small representation of a lengthy and repetitive campaign of abuse against the victim.
Staude called the offending “excessive and unjustified”.
“Your conduct was not just unreasonable, but it was also either gratuitous or done by way of retribution,” he said to the couple.
“Either way, it was cruel mistreatment of a young child.
“Your offending in each case involved a breach of trust and a breach of your parental responsibilities to protect and care for [the victim]. There is no indication in the facts that you showed any concern for her during or after the offences. And it is accepted that the offending was not isolated, at least in a number of respects.”
The court was told that both the man and the woman, who have since divorced, blamed each other for being the more dominant instigator of the abuse.
“I consider that overall, you are equally culpable,” Staude told them.
Both offenders narrowly escaped jail for the offending, with Staude imposing a three-year suspended term of imprisonment for each.
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