EUNICE SPRY

This "being" was a foster mother, a Jehovah´s Witness, who beat, starved and sadistically abused 3 children she "cared" for, over a 19 year period.

A foster mother who subjected three children in her care to a "horrifying catalogue of cruel and sadistic treatment" was jailed for 14 years today.

Eunice Spry, 62, from Gloucestershire, routinely beat, abused and starved children over a 19-year period, sometimes forcing sticks down their throats or making them eat their own vomit or rat excrement.

Judge Simon Darwall-Smith told the devout Jehovah's Witness that this was the worst case he had come across in 40 years.

Passing sentence, he said: "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."

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

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

However, a jury at Bristol crown court convicted her last month of 26 charges, including unlawful wounding, cruelty to a person under 16, assault occasioning actual bodily harm, perverting the course of justice and witness intimidation.

Today, Spry, a slight figure in the dock, looked on impassively as she was sentenced.

Judge Darwall-Smith ordered her to pay costs of £80,000, which he said would mean she would have to sell at least one of her two properties in Gloucestershire. He also banned Spry from working with children for life.

The judge told her: "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."

He said the children she had abused had "relied upon you as their sole carer and protector".

The offences took place in two of Spry's homes in Gloucestershire between 1986 and 2005.

During the trial, the three victims, known as A, B and C, all gave evidence describing how their daily routines were punctuated by random acts of bizarre and sadistic violence.

Victim A told the court how she was confined to a wheelchair by Spry for over three years, after being injured in a car crash in 2000.

She said Spry had tried to stop her from trying to walk again, in a cynical bid to maximise the compensation payout she could get from insurers. The woman, now aged 21, eventually decided herself to walk again, and fled the home on the same day.

Victim B, also now 21, told how her foster mother would pull her hair and shove her face in her pet dog's faeces as punishment.

Victim C, now 18, described how his foster mother held his hand down on a hot electric hob until it was left looking like a "gooey mess". He said he had been force-fed so much washing-up liquid by Spry that he could now differentiate between the brands on taste alone.

The children were made to eat lard and if they were sick, would be forced to eat what they had thrown up.

Spry was able to conceal her reign of abuse as the children were home-taught and not sent to school. She also covered her tracks by forbidding them to be examined on their own by doctors or dentists.

The abuse was finally discovered after another Jehovah's Witness secretly confronted victim A about marks to her head, caused when Spry rubbed sandpaper over her face.

Today, during the mitigation section of the sentencing hearing, Nigel Mitchell, for Spry, claimed that despite the "unpleasantness and violence ... there were also periods of happiness" for the children.

She said Spry had shown love towards the children who had been taken on "canal trips on the barge, trips to Florida, the Florida Keys, Disney".

Mr Mitchell also revealed that Spry had needed protection in prison following her convictions and it was a "particularly unpleasant" place for her.

Later, Dan Norris, the Labour MP for Wansdyke, which covers parts of South Gloucestershire, welcomed the sentencing. He said: "Mrs Spry will not, you can be satisfied, reoffend. She will not be in charge of children and looking after children again."

Her victims are now grown ups doing better in life and 2 of them have published books about their life with Eunice Spry.

Deliver Me From Evil: A Sadistic Foster Mother, A Childhood Torn Apart 

Book by Alloma Gilbert

Child C: Surviving a Foster Mother´s Reign of Terror

Book by Christopher Spry