WARNING: Conflicting details
A man brutally tortured his three children by frequently hitting them with weapons, putting salt in their eyes and boiling water on their hands during a “horrific” and prolonged ordeal, a court has heard.
The three children were no older than 10 when the man, who cannot be named for legal reasons, subjected them to abuse in South Brisbane for four months.
Details of the man’s torture of the children were detailed during his sentencing in the Brisbane District Court on Thursday.
A small group of family members and supporters joined him in court as the man frequently put his head in his hands and fidgeted throughout the proceedings.
The court was told the abuse was “prolonged”, often involving the use of weapons, bars and even a frying pan during the beatings, which lasted four months between late September 2022 and January 2023.
The horrific torture a man inflicted on his three children over four months was revealed in the Brisbane District Court on Thursday, including how he put salt in their eyes. Image: NewsWire/Glenn Campbell
On other occasions they poured salt into their eyes and immersed their hands in boiling water.
The man took the children – two boys and a girl – from their grandparents, who were caring for them, in July 2022 and refused to return them.
The girl is not the man’s biological daughter, but the court was told the man considered her his daughter.
Child Safety investigated the man taking the children, but took no further action as there was no indication the children were being harmed at the time.
But in the following months more worrying information was passed on to authorities, leading to the police being notified.
The abuse was only discovered after police were called to the property after the man called triple-0 and said his five-year-old son was not breathing.
The child was taken to the hospital in a coma.
While riding in the ambulance, the man lied to paramedics and said there were no other children on the property.
The older boy and girl were later found by police locked in the garage of the house, sleeping in a broken bed, at 1:30 a.m. two days later.
“They were covered in bruises and could not walk properly,” District Court Judge Jennifer Rosengren said.
The man had “deliberately” ordered his sisters to pick up the children to prevent the wounds he had inflicted from being discovered, Judge Rosengren said.
Crown prosecutor Amy Stannard said the girl had a fractured knee when she was taken to hospital.
All of the children were malnourished: one of the children refused to allow the nurses to take away his unfinished food while he recovered in the hospital.
The court was told the man had pleaded guilty to three counts of torture and one count of asphyxiation and grievous bodily harm at an earlier date.
Judge Rosengren said the details of the torture against the three boys involved the man “intentionally inflicting pain and suffering” by hitting or slapping them with his hand or a metal bar, throwing them against the wall and the floor, putting salt on their eyes, forcing them to sleep on a broken bed in the garage and not providing the children with adequate food.
The suffocation charge involved the man placing his legs over his eldest son’s head and neck.
The man was sentenced to 14 years in prison after pleading guilty to charges of torture, strangulation and serious bodily injury. Image: NewsWire/Dan Peled
Judge Rosengren said she had a hard time seeing the photographs of the children’s injuries, which have been sealed by the court.
“What you have inflicted on these young children borders on the indescribable,” he said.
‘Each of the three children is at high risk of needing access to lifelong counseling and psychological support.
“None of them attended school during the six months or so they were in your care.”
The man received a headline sentence of 14 years in prison, with Judge Rosengren noting that he had either a limited view of his crime or a limited ability to discuss the violence.
“He shockingly used his position of trust and power on these helpless and dependent young children whom he had removed from the protective influence of their grandparents,” Judge Rosengren said.
“They had no one to turn to for protection.”
The man was born in the Congo but his family fled to a refugee camp in Tanzania when he was a child, until he emigrated to Australia.
The court was told the man did not have a visa and was at risk of deportation.
A psychologist said the man had discussed problems with alcohol and speculated that his offending could be explained by “chronic anger management problems and emotional dysregulation.”