A judge says a married couple's repeated abuse of an intellectually disabled boy in their "house of horror" was “vile sexual offending'’, jailing them for more than 30 years.
Gosford District Court judge David Wilson on Thursday said the wife blamed her drug use, but was extremely remorseful and accepted responsibility for the couple’s “wicked behaviour'’ ruining a vulnerable young child’s life.
He said the husband had no insight into what he had done, blaming others including the victim for his actions in their NSW Central Coast home.
Judge Wilson set maximum jail terms of 32 years for the husband and 30 years for the wife.
He said the husband deserved a harsher sentence because he was the dominant offender, initiating sexual contact with the boy, filming the abuse, preparing a compilation video and providing the boy with drugs to have sex with the wife.
The judge noted when police told the husband he would be charged with abusing the boy, he replied: “Yeah, but he wanted it.”
Judge Wilson said the wife, who was diagnosed with pedophilic and necrophilia disorders, told a psychiatrist after her arrest that she had never used drugs until her husband gave them to her when she was 42.
She began using the drug ice daily, as well as cocaine twice a week, and claimed while she preferred to have sex with adults, the drugs made her also want to have sex with children.
Judge Wilson said the wife told the psychiatrist she sometimes just went along with the abuse of the cognitively impaired boy, but admitted there were other times when she enjoyed it as much as her husband.
The judge said the couple, who cannot be named, had been married for 23 years, had a child together, and the wife planned to stay with her husband when released from prison.
The husband, 51, was jailed for 32 years with a minimum of 22 years and four months, and the wife, 50, was jailed for 30 years with a minimum of 19 years and six months.
Each pleaded guilty to 46 charges each, including aggravated sexual intercourse with a cognitively impaired child and filming the boy for child abuse material between 2016 and 2021, when the boy was aged between 12 and 17.
The wife also admitted possessing prohibited weapons including a zombie sword, Taser and flick knife.
The couple was arrested in February 2021 after police raided their home searching for drugs and weapons and found a mobile phone with images of the boy being sexually abused at their home. They also found 61 videos of the abuse.
Judge Wilson said about 300 debauched stories were discovered in the husband’s iPhone revealing the couple’s predisposition to having sex with young children and the lengths they would go to satisfy their sexual needs.
The wife wrote about having sex with her brother when she was nine, having numerous sexual encounters with nursing home residents and interfering with corpses in a morgue.
Judge Wilson said police feared the stories showed the couple would have continued to abuse children if they had not been arrested.
The couple had one fantasy of taking in homeless or deserted children and abusing them and also discussed kidnapping children to satisfy their sexual urges.
The husband filmed themselves abusing the boy and tattooed the image of a demon on the victim as a reminder of the abuse.
The judge said text messages between the couple discussing what they had been doing to the boy in the ‘house of horror’ revealed their extreme depravity.
