A mother of six who sexually abused her son during a childhood of fear and neglect has been sentenced to five years and eight months in prison.
The prostitute had pleaded guilty to cruelty, gross indecency and neglect.
Her four children suffered abuse, neglect and cruelty by their parents, two uncles and two other men dating back to the late 1970s.
The children’s father admitted a total of 17 counts of wilful neglect and cruelty by wilful assault.
He was sentenced to four years in jail.
Judge Mr Justice Horner told the couple in Belfast Crown Court on Friday that neither of them had been prepared to take responsibility for their actions.
He added: “Your chilly indifference to your children’s welfare generally and your complicity in the sexually deviant behaviour you inflicted on [three of them] speaks of a heartless tormentor interested primarily in her own pleasures and enjoyment.
“However I accept that you are not a predatory paedophile. Not only are you pathetic, weak willed and inept, but you are also selfish and uncaring.”
The 58-year-old had appeared in Belfast Crown Court with her ex-husband, two brothers and two former lovers, one an ex-RUC man.
The woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, had previously pleaded guilty to forcing her son to watching her have s*x with her brothers and ex-RUC reserve Constable Thomas Fitzpatrick in the 1970s.
She also made the youngster put her br**sts in his mouth during a period of abuse and neglect that started when he was four.
The Belfast court heard about a litany of horrific cruelty meted out to four of six siblings – one boy and his three younger sisters – by their own parents, uncles and others, including Fitzpatrick, 53, and a baker Patrick Kilmartin, 59.
The men visited the couple’s various Co Down houses which were chaotic, filthy and infested with rodents up to 30 years ago.
In one of the worst cases of its kind to come before the Crown Court in Northern Ireland, prosecuting QC Charles MacCreanor revealed how the youngsters lived in constant fear and suffered physical and s*xual abuse , and neglect.
It started when they were tots in cots and lasted until 1986 when they were finally taken into care, the youngest aged eight and the oldest, 11.
Judge Mr Justice Horner heard how the mother sought to ‘educate’ her daughters, now in their 30s, about s*x by making them watch her have intercourse with various men including her brothers. She told them: “You’ll have to learn this.”
The girls were not only subjected to s*xual assaults and gross indecency, but were savagely beaten by their father over the years.
On two separate occasions they were beaten so hard and for so long that they wet themselves in fear.
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