‘Sadistic’ foster mother jailed for 14 years

A FOSTER mother who subjected three children in her care to a “horrifying catalogue of cruel and sadistic treatment” was jailed for 14 years yesterday.

Eunice Spry, 62, from Gloucestershire, routinely beat, abused and starved the vulnerable youngsters over a 19-year period.

The devout Jehovah’s Witness forced sticks down their throats and made them eat their own vomit and rat excrement.

As punishment for misbehaving, she would beat them on the soles of their feet and force them to drink washing-up liquid and bleach.

One victim described how she held his hand down on a hot electric hob until it was left looking like a “gooey mess”.

Spry staunchly denied all the claims made against her and insisted the only punishment she ever used was “a smack on the bottom”.

But a jury at Bristol Crown Court convicted her last month of 26 charges, ranging from unlawful wounding, cruelty to a person under 16, assault occasioning actual bodily harm, perverting the course of justice and witness intimidation.

Judge Simon Darwall-Smith told Spry this was the worst case he had come across in 40 years.

He told her: “Frankly, it’s difficult for anyone to understand how any human being could have even contemplated what you did, let alone with the regularity and premeditation you employed.”

The slight figure in the dock looked on impassively as the judge sentenced her.

He also ordered her to pay costs of £80,000, which he said would inevitably mean she would have to sell at least one of her two properties in Gloucestershire.

Passing sentence, Judge Darwall-Smith described Spry's treatment of the children as “collective and substantial brutality”.

He said: “I could not fail to notice that during the five-and-a-half weeks of the trial you showed no emotion even when the jury returned their guilty verdicts.”

The judge also banned Spry from working with or training children for life.

During the four-week trial the jury heard harrowing evidence of how Spry subjected the children to a regime of abuse. The abuse was finally discovered after a Jehovah’s Witness secretly confronted Victim A about marks to her head caused when Spry rubbed sandpaper over her face.