Mum ‘hurled toy elephant at daughter’

The ex-wife of a former Pink Floyd lighting engineer fought back tears as she admitted injuring one her daughters by throwing a toy elephant at her.

Susan Wynne-Willson, 69, allegedly abused Poppy, Rosa and Daniel while her husband Peter Wynne-Willson was away with the rock band.

She is said to have stuffed underwear into their mouths to stop them screaming as she kicked, punched, and bit them at their £700,000 mansion flat.

Giving evidence for the first time Wynne-Wilson told jurors of her joy at adopting Daniel but at times during their marriage she felt ‘alone’, ‘depressed’ and ‘isolated.’

She was born in South Africa but her parents brought her to London when she was still a baby and she suffers from dyslexia.

Wynne-Wilson said she met her husband in the 1960s during an ‘interesting’ time in London and they got married in 1969 after travelling around Europe.

When she gave birth to their first child, she said she felt isolated and often cried on the stairs but the couple enjoyed an idyllic life with a pony called Blossom and cats and dogs.

The prosecution allege after the couple separated she would make the children line up beside her mattress with her then new partner, Rick Johnson, and she would strike them.

Holding back tears, she denied the claims and said: ‘No of course not, that is absolutely untrue I think that Rosa has this image of coming into the room.

‘It is beyond commenting on, it is absolutely ridiculous and extreme.’

The mother has accepted that she threw a toy elephant that meant her daughter Poppy needed hospital treatment.

She said that she threw the toy ‘in their direction’ and told the children not to tell hospital staff what happened as she was afraid of losing them.

‘It was unforgivable,’ she said.

She claimed she was feeling nauseous as she was pregnant at the time and heard ‘a commotion’ about shampoo.

‘There was a crescendo,’ she continued.

‘Everyone was really upset.

‘I drove immediately to the out-patients.

‘A nurse put a strip on Poppy’s eye.

‘I said to the children “I should not have done this. You cannot say I have done you will be taken away from me.”

‘I was terribly upset and really panicked with the situation having happened.

‘I felt really tearful having injured Poppy and I was completely overwhelmed by the situation.

‘I felt I had lost complete control of our lives.’

She denied throwing ‘other objects’ at the children, but admitted to throwing water at Rosa and Dan.

‘I know that I had thrown water,’ she said.

‘It does not sound good but I have thrown water at Daniel and Rosa.’

Dad-of-five Mr Wynne-Willson has told how the situation moved from a happy, loving, family into something ‘not normal’ and ‘far beyond my experience’.

Son Dan, now 42, previously told the court that his life was ‘like a slave’ with his mother and he used to daydream about having her killed when he was younger.

He retaliated and threw a bottle at his mother aged 11 and she never physically struck him again but the mental abuse continued, the court heard.

Daughter Rosa Aguela de Geuro, now 42, said her mother was violent towards her before she ran away at the age of 14.

The siblings reported the abuse in 2015 and their mother was arrested.

The alleged abuse began after the couple and their five children moved from their ‘stately home’ in Barnby, near Whitby, to a ‘filthy squat’ in Covent Garden.

Wynne-Willson, of Lissenden Mansions, Lissenden Gardens, Gospel Oak, northwest London, denies five counts of child cruelty and three counts of assault occasioning actual bodily harm between 1979 and 1993.

The trial continues.

ends