An Australian husband and wife have been sentenced to lengthy prison terms for sexually abusing, torturing and confining their daughter over 15 years.
The father used various sharp tools to rape and torture the girl, who was left tied up in a shed or in a plastic box for up to three days at a time on the family’s rural property in northern New South Wales, the District Court in Sydney was told.
The 59-year-old was sentenced to 48 years in prison. He will be eligible for parole after serving 36 years.
The mother, 51, was sentenced to 16 years in prison and must serve at least 11 years.
The father began abusing the girl when she was five years old.
He had also held the girl’s head under water in a stream, wrapped her in barbed wire, forced her to eat hot chillies and threatened her with a chainsaw.
The mother began teaching her daughter how to sexually arouse her father from the age of eight.
The father was convicted of 73 offences and his wife of 13 offences in June. They denied all charges.
Judge Sarah Huggett described the crimes as “atrocious in the extreme”.
She also described the father as “selfish, depraved and sadistic”.
The victim, now aged 24, first complained about her parents in 2011, while she was a patient in a psychiatric hospital ward.
Police arrested them in 2013.