A man and a woman from Harrogate have been jailed for a combined 11 years after subjecting two boys in their care to years of “sadistic” cruelty.

The two defendants, whom we have not named to protect the identity of the children, appeared for sentence at York Crown Court today (March 3) after being convicted of child cruelty.

As well as the two counts of cruelty of which they were each found guilty following a week-long trial in July last year, the male defendant was also convicted of assault occasioning actual bodily harm after strangling the older brother “to the point of unconsciousness”.

The two defendants, both middle-aged, appeared in the dock together to learn of their fate but were no longer a couple, the court heard.

‘Harrowing’ and ‘sadistic’

Prosecutor Deborah Smithies recounted the “harrowing” testimonies from witnesses during the trial and described the defendants’ catalogue of child cruelty as “sadistic”.

This included food-tampering, measly food rations, wanton violence and emotional torment.

Ms Smithies said that one of the boys had his cereal laced with washing-up liquid and the other had his packed-lunch sandwich deliberately encrusted with dirt by the male defendant.  

She said the female defendant was given custody of the boys following the death of their mother some years ago because their father “was not on the scene”.

The female defendant had known their late mother, also from Harrogate, and following an assessment by social services, she was granted legal guardianship of the boys.

“And so, the boys moved in permanently with (the defendant),” said Ms Smithies.

Soon afterwards, the woman’s boyfriend, her co-defendant, moved into her home and they and the boys “lived there as a family”.

The older of the two brothers, who was in his early teens at the time, lived at the property for about three years. His younger brother remained at the house for a further three years after his brother eventually left due to the chronic abuse.

Ms Smithies added:

In a recorded police interview, the older boy said the defendants set “restrictive rules” for him and his brother. 

He said he was “not allowed to make a drink without asking” and he and his brother weren’t allowed to turn on the TV without permission.

Ms Smithies said:

The older brother said he was “always hungry when he lived with them”.

‘Hit him harder’

Ms Smithies said that on one occasion, the boy found dirt in a sandwich in his packed lunch. He suspected that it was the male defendant who had sullied the sandwich because he had told the boy on a previous occasion that he had spat in his food at dinnertime.

The victim said there were physical assaults by both defendants, including the female who “punched and slapped him in the face with rings on her fingers”. The blows would “sometimes leave little scratches on his face”.

He said the woman’s partner would “hit him harder” and on at least one occasion he was left with a busted nose.

On another occasion, two years after he moved in, the male defendant flew into a rage in the kitchen, grabbed the boy by the throat and “squeezed to the point where he lost consciousness”.

Ms Smithies added:

She said it was after this incident that the boy decided he had to leave the house. He went to social services and spoke to a social worker who had been assigned to him and his brother when the female defendant was granted the guardianship order a few years earlier.

The boy eventually told the social worker about the assault in the kitchen that day and said he didn’t want to return home.

“But (the female defendant) had full parental responsibility for the boy and so where they stayed was up to her,” said Ms Smithies.

The social worker, who was reluctant to let the boy go back to the house, contacted the female defendant to ask her if the boy had permission to stay with a friend that night “while the dust settled”, but the defendant said he had to return home.

The social worker went to the defendants’ home that same afternoon when the male defendant made it “very clear that he didn’t care about either of the boys” and expressed contempt for the older child whom he called names.

The social worker described him as “angry and hostile”.

Despite this, the older brother remained at the house, in the couple’s ‘care’, for another year.

He said he was regularly “turfed out of the house very early in the morning”, with “nowhere else to go”.

On one of these occasions, he went back to social services and said he “couldn’t stay (at the defendant’s house) anymore and wanted to leave”. 

By that time, the boy was 16 years of age – old enough for social services to facilitate a move away from the property in Harrogate and allowing him to move in with a relative who lived in a different part of the country.

However, his younger brother stayed with the defendants for another three years. He would later tell police that he too was subjected to the “same controlling behaviour described by (his older brother)” at the hands of the defendants.

“He said that he wasn’t allowed to eat with the defendants at the same time as them and had to eat separately on his own,” added Ms Smithies.

He said the male defendant made all the meals and there were times when he would find that his food had been adulterated and his breakfast cereal smeared with washing-up liquid from the sink.

Ms Smithies added:

Ms Smithies said that matters came to a head when, one day in the summer of 2022, the boy returned home after being at a friend’s house and was confronted by the male defendant who blocked his entry.

The male defendant finally let him in, but then “pushed (the boy) up the stairs to his room”, held him in a “locked position” and bit him.

Ms Smithies added:

This resulted in the boy, who was by now a teenager, being arrested on suspicion of assault. He spent the night in a police cell.

Serious cruelty

Following the incident, the social worker contacted one of the victims’ relatives who said she would take the boy in at her home.

Ms Smithies said the defendants had subjected the boys to “repeated assaults” and the younger brother had suffered at their hands since the age of eight.

She added:

A female relative of the boys said it had been “devastating to witness the transformation in them”.

They had gone from being “vibrant children, full of life” to being in a permanent state of “hyper-vigilance” due to the abuse they had suffered.

She said the abuse had “stolen the men they were supposed to become”.

“I’ve seen them panic and suffer from anxiety, depression and nightmares,” she added.

It had left them with “profound, long-term mental-health struggles which have altered the trajectory of their lives”.

She said although the brothers had sought mental-health therapy and medication, the “mental-damage caused is a weight they’ll carry forever”.

Defence barrister Henry Fernandez, for the male defendant, said his client had been a hard-working man throughout his adult life.

He said that the defendants had recently separated and his client had since fallen on hard times.

Samuel Ponniah, for the female defendant, said his client had children of her own and the consequences to her wider family of her being jailed would be “devastating”.

He said that she was otherwise a “pro-social, hard-working person”.

Judge Simon Hickey said although character references showed that the male defendant was otherwise an “industrious man”, there was “another side” to him, as was evidenced by the systematic cruelty and violence meted out to the “very vulnerable” young victims, most notably the older brother who was “choked to unconsciousness”.

Mr Hickey added:

The judge condemned the female defendant for betraying the trust placed in her to look after the boys.

He told her: 

He added: 

Mr Hickey noted that the older brother had said he had been “crushed” by the defendants’ cruelty.

He jailed the male defendant for six years and handed the female defendant a five-year prison sentence.

The defendants were told they would serve less than half of their sentences behind bars before being released on prison licence.