Child C Surviving a Foster Mother's Reign of Terror

In April 2007, 62-year-old Eunice Spry was sentenced to 14 years in prison for subjecting three children in her care to horrifying physical and mental abuse over the course of two decades.

The judge told the court it was the worst case of child abuse he had heard in his entire career.

While her Gloucestershire home should have been a safe haven for the un-loved, in reality it was a prison in which vulnerable children were beaten with sticks and metal bars, scrubbed viciously with sandpaper and routinely forced to eat lard, bleach, vomit and faeces.

To the outside world, Spry was a Jehovah's Witness who presented herself as a moral pillar in the community but behind closed doors she was a sadistic tyrant who forced the children in her care to live in a war zone.

Now, for the first time, one of her victims - known in the case as 'Child C' - tells the full, shocking truth of what went on in Eunice Spry's house. Now 19 and living in constant pain from the injuries inflicted on him, he is a courageous survivor looking forward to the future.

This is the real story behind the headlines which captured the world.

This is Christopher's story.

"I can tell the difference between various brands of washing-up liquid just from their taste. I have constant trouble walking, where she hit me with a cricket bat. I do not make friends easily and still find it hard to sleep. I can never have children of my own."

It should have been a refuge. Instead, evil foster mother Eunice Spry's Gloucestershire home became a prison where, over the course of 20 years, vulnerable children were routinely abused and tortured.

Christopher tells how he was kept naked and starving, imprisioned in a squalid room and in a constant state of psychological trauma. He speaks candidly of how, despite his appalling suffering, he still felt love for his foster mother. His heartbreaking experience pulls no punches, and brings to light the full details of what it is like to grow up brutalised and abandoned with no-one to hear your plight. With his tormentor Eunice Spry now serving fourteen years in prison, Christopher can finally tell the full, horrifying story of a trust betrayed and a childhood denied.

Child C
Simon and Schuster Australia
Author: Christopher Spry
ISBN: 9781847372574
RRP: $29.95