A former soldier made his little stepdaughter stan

A former soldier made his little stepdaughter stand at attention
beside her bed before severely beating her because ‘she didn’t
eat her breakfast quickly enough’, an Old Bailey court heard
today.

The court heard how the man grabbed the four-year-old by the
hair and tried to force toast down her throat before biting the
child on the forehead and picking her up by the neck.

His wife described how she had to claim to be ‘going to the
shops’ when she fled with the bruised and battered girl to report
the beating to Ilford, Essex, police station.

She had to leave the couple’s three-month-old alone with the
man she described as violent, paranoid and possessive before she
was allowed to go.

Police accompanied her back to their home, a homeless persons
hostel in Ilford, and arrested the man.

His wife withdrew her complaint two weeks later, but told the
court she had done so because of a campaign of terror and intimi
dation from her husband.

But Mrs Julie St Clare-Evans, defending, read out a long
statement allegedly written by his wife when she withdrew her
complaint which exonerated him and accused police and social
workers of trying to prevent the couple getting back together.

After her complaint was withdrawn, the couple’s two children
were taken away by Social Services workers and she willingly
returned to live with her husband for another ‘four or five
months’ of increasingly common beatings, it is alleged.

She left him again but on August 7, 1989, claims she was
taken against her will to his father’s house in Keswick, Cumbria,
where she was kept for five days and repeatedly beaten.

The man denies charges of assaulting his wife and stepdaugh
ter, attempting to pervert the course of public justice and false
imprisonment.

The trial continues on Monday.

ends