The mother and father of a 24-year-old woman have been sentenced to jail for horrific ongoing cases of sexual and psychological abuse against their daughter.
The Sydney Morning Herald reports that the father was sentenced to a maximum of 48 years in jail after being found guilty of 73 offences, and her mother was sentenced to a maximum of 16 years for 13 offences.
The girl’s father raped and tortured her, with many incidents occurring in an old chicken shed in the family’s rural property, where he would also lock her up. The first rape occurred in her bedroom when she was just five years old and her mum was in the hospital after giving birth. The last occurred when she was 19.
Among the atrocities that the daughter was exposed to were that she was forced to eat her own vomit and swallow hot chillies, and her father would use scissors, spanners, nails and other tools to abuse her. She had etched the words ‘trapped’, ‘dad’ and ‘mum is coming’ with a nail into the frame of the shed where she was locked.
Her mother suggested ways in which she could help sexually please her father, once telling her, “It makes it better if you make noises, it would make it better for you and Dad.”
The Daily Telegraph report that the parents are unable to be named, as it would make the daughter easily identifiable. The daughter is a promising athlete, and the mother and father often threatened abuse if she did not perform well at sporting events.
Though the daughter had kept the abuse secret throughout her life, after spending some time in a mental hospital she gave a statement to police, who issued the father an AVO. A week before the AVO was to be heard in court, the parents found her and threatened her with ‘the shed’, however she managed to escape.
At the sentencing, Judge Huggett said that the parents had not shown a hint of remorse for their actions. She also said that their crimes were ‘depravity of an almost unimaginable magnitude’.
The daughter read a statement to the courtroom at a sentencing hearing earlier this year.
“My father inflicted evil,” she said. “He abused me in such ways that I thought I was going to die. My mother didn’t stop him and did not protect me. My childhood was lost and I can never get it back.
“My focus, my goal throughout my childhood was to survive and to satisfy [my father’s] needs so that he wasn’t angry.
“If that meant [competing at sport] or pleasing him in sexual ways, that is what it meant.
“Now, on this day and every day for the rest of my life, I have to find some way to move on from his abuse.”
