Eunice Spry, ‘Britain’s most sadistic mum’
.Eunice Spry (born 28 April 1944) is a British woman from Tewkesbury in Gloucestershire, a Jehovah's Witness who was convicted of 26 charges of child abuse against children in her foster care in April 2007. She was sentenced to 14 years' imprisonment and ordered to pay £80,000 costs. In sentencing, the judge told Spry that it was the "worst case in his 40 years practising law".
The foster mother forced three children in her care (two foster, one adopted) to eat their own excrement and vomit, rammed sticks down the children's throats, rubbed their faces with sandpaper and locked two of them naked in a room for a month. This torture went on for nearly 20 years.
Two of her foster children and her adopted daughter have published books about their childhoods. Spry also had two other children in her care at this time, one adopted daughter and one adopted son (younger brother of Christopher), but these children did not experience any abuse such as the aforementioned three did. In September 2008, Spry's sentence was reduced by the High Court to 12 years. In September 2020, Victoria Spry took her own life. Her siblings allege that residual trauma from the abuse she suffered led to her suicide.