Foster Mother’s 20 Years Of Sadistic Abuse On Children

A “sadistic” foster mother was found guilty yesterday of subjecting three children in her care to a horrifying catalogue of physical and mental abuse over 20 years.

{mosimage}Eunice Spry, 62, beat the children with sticks and metal bars, scrubbed their skin with sandpaper and forced them to eat lard, bleach, vomit and even their own faeces.

She treated the children, two girls and a boy, as if they were her slaves, ordering one of them to stay in a wheelchair for four years even though she could walk so Spry could claim benefits for her.

Spry, a Jehovah’s Witness and a pillar of her local community, would punish the children because she thought they were possessed by the devil.

Once she kept two of them imprisoned, naked and starving, in a room for a month.

She forced them to run up and down the stairs and “tortured” them by making them take part in the “invisible chair” game, squatting for hours on end until they collapsed – then they were beaten.

The abuse, which lasted from 1986 to 2005, was not spotted by the authorities and last night the Gloucestershire Safeguarding Children Board (GSCB), the body now responsible for monitoring organisations in charge of children’s welfare in the county, admitted mistakes were made.

GSCB chair Jo Grills said the children were seen by “many different people” but few were a “consistent presence”.

The statement added that information was not shared, one of the failings which led to the death of eight-year-old Victoria Climbié.

Spry was convicted of 26 charges, including child cruelty, unlawful wounding, actual bodily harm, perverting the course of justice and witness intimidation. During the five-week trial she had denied any wrongdoing, insisting she had simply tried to instil Christian values into them.

Bristol crown court was told how the children, now young adults, were placed with Spry as infants by social services.

One of the young women, who came into her care aged five, told how the children were treated as “slaves”, rarely allowed out of the house and told to lie about their bruises and scars.

Victim A, now 21, said: “We were regularly beaten. We were starved or made to eat blocks of lard, drowned in the bath and kicked down the stairs.

“Mum had an array of sticks and would beat us with them and kick us until we were bruised and collapsing with pain. If we screamed, she would push the sticks down our throats. The pain was unbearable.”

She told the court her earliest memory was of Spry forcing her to eat a can of dog food as a punishment, and when she was sick, to eat the vomit.

Victim A was confined to a wheelchair following a car accident in 2000. She could have left the chair after six months but Spry kept her in it for four years so she could collect compensation.

The young woman said: “I knew I could walk, but she would have killed me. When I tried, she clobbered me and said I was being selfish.”

One regular punishment was starvation. On one occasion Victims A and C, then 10 and eight, were locked naked in a bedroom for a month and denied food.

Victim C told the court: “If we wanted to go to the toilet we had to do it in the corner. I remember being made to eat my own excrement off the floor.”

The abuse came to light in December 2004 when Victim A confided in a family friend, who took her to the police.

Kerry Barker, prosecuting, said: “What came out is a horrifying catalogue of cruel and sadistic treatment of these three children, both physical and psychological.”

The family home was infested with rats and the children – who did not attend school – would often sleep on the floor without a mattress.

Spry, who had two children of her own, denied any abuse, telling the court: “I sweated blood for those children. These children came from not very good backgrounds and I wanted to bring them up like my own children. I didn’t punish them physically but as a last resort I would smack a child’s bottom.

Sentencing was adjourned for reports.