One daughter was tied to a tree and whipped until she was nearly dead

DETECTIVE Sergeant Kieran McNamara outlined the litany of physical abuse and torture to which the woman subjected her young children.

In 2002, she stood by as her 14-year-old daughter was stabbed through the arm and then helped stitch the wound at home with an ordinary needle and thread so that the girl, who was regularly beaten and tortured along with her seven siblings, could not make a complaint to the authorities. The mother refused to take her daughter to a doctor when the wound and stitches became infected and burst open days later.

A doctor who examined the girl’s right arm in 2009, when some of the children were taken into care, “cringed” at the thought that the child was stitched without anaesthetic, Sgt McNamara said.