The father of an adopted five-year-old girl jailed for sexually abusing her was not accused of beating her, despite evidence pointing to her being exposed to systematic physical aggression, a magistrate noted yesterday.
The man, who cannot be named by court order, was jailed for four years and six months by Magistrate Jacqueline Padovani who, among other things, heard that hehad touched the girl intimately while his wife was out in July 2009.
The facts of the case painted a terrible picture of a girl who spent her life going in and out of institutes and when her mother finally took her home life did not get any better.
The evidence showed that the girl had been subjected to systematic physical aggression. Yet, this did not feature in the charges brought against her father, Magistrate Padovani noted.
She was made to stand on one leg for 15 minutes at a time in a corner and punched in the face.
In one of the more horrific incidents, her mother described how the father threw the girl on the bed, stood on her stomach and hit her in the face until she bled in the mouth. He then squeezed her neck until she almost stopped breathing. He would also grab and pull her tongue out.
In another sickening episode, the father locked the child in a dark room and, when she tried to get out, she ended up breaking a glass door. The girl was injured and required sutures.
The court heard that the mother knew exactly what was going on but refused to speak up out of sheer fear of her husband who threatened to “cut her head off”.
Such was her fear that, even when testifying in court she desperately tried to dis-credit reports by the social workers directly involved in the case.
The magistrate acknowledged that the girl’s mother was a victim of domestic violence and that the fear was well founded and very real, leading her to try and create a smoke screen to mislead the court.
The magistrate said she spoke to the girl and analysed her testimony. She noted that she had not been primed to say anything. This stood in stark contrast to her father who was not at all credible on the witness stand.
The girl had told her social worker that when she grew up she wanted to kick her father out of the house, hit him with a shoe and then throw him out of the window.