BOY SAVAGELY BEATEN BY HIS STEPDAD FELT HE WAS LIVING ON DEATH ROW’
A teenage boy who suffered sickening abuse at the hands of his sadistic stepdad told a teacher he felt like he was ‘living on death row,’ a court heard.
The 36-year-old thug beat his teenage stepson with a plastic pool cue until his back bled and punched him repeatedly in the face until he threw up at the family home in Dagenham, Essex.
The boy suffered physical abuse between the ages of nine and 14, while his older sister ran away after three years of ill-treatment.
Snaresbrook Crown Court heard their mother tried to stop the attacks but joined in after falling under the influence of her ‘domineering’ partner.
The stepfather was jailed for nearly four years while the mum walked free after the judge handed her a suspended sentence.
None of the parties involved in the case can be named for legal reasons.
The children have now started a new life with another relative.
The attacks began in 2006 after the children’s mother moved in her new partner in 2006.
After the girl ran away in 2009 her younger brother was subject to increasingly violent attacks, the court heard.
‘He described how if his room was messy, his stepfather would punch him in the arm with a clenched fist, hard swinging blows,’ said Judge Wendy Joseph QC.
‘When he went to a school dance, this defendant punched him over and over again until he could not breathe and eventually was sick.
‘These are examples of the sort of things that were happening to him and they were happening to him in the end three of four times a week after his sister left.
‘His life was to a great extent a catalogue of greater or lesser violence.’
The children were also denied access to food, despite the house being stocked with supplies for their parents.
They were forced to stand against the wall for long periods as punishment, and the boy was locked in a cupboard.
The daughter was shown pornographic material by her stepfather, who comment on her developing body and repeatedly called her fat, when she was emaciated.
Eventually, the boy admitted what was happening to family members and a school protection officer (corr).
‘He said he felt like a prisoner on death row,’ said the judge.
‘He said he was not allowed to do anything except for house work and his mother had told him she would get rid of him.’
The boy said his stepdad claimed he was punishing him ‘for his own good’, and ordered him to carry out housework while playing on the boy’s computer games, which the child was not allowed to touch.
When police called at the house to investigate, they found it filthy and unhygienic.
The court heard the children’s stepfather felt he was meting out ‘appropriate’ beatings when he felt they were misbehaving.
But the judge said: ‘If he did think this conduct was appropriate, it was a conclusion to which no right-minded person could possible have come.’
The stepfather admitted four counts of cruelty to a person aged under 16 amounting to ‘wilful neglect’.
He was jailed for a total of three years and eight months after admitting two counts of neglect.
Judge Joseph agreed to suspend the mother’s 21 month prison sentence for two years, adding: ‘I have come to the conclusion that she is a woman of no resources and courage – those features are of course not criminal offences.’
ends
