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SYDNEY (AP) — An Australian husband and wife were sentenced to lengthy prison terms on Friday for sexually abusing, torturing and confining their daughter over 15 years.
The District Court in Sydney was told that the father used various sharp tools to rape and torture the girl who was left tied up in a shed or in a plastic box for up to three days at a time on the family's rural property in northern New South Wales.
The parents cannot be identified. The 59-year-old father, was sentenced to 48 years in prison. He will be eligible for parole after serving 36 years.
The mother, 51, was sentenced to 16 years in prison and must serve at least 11 years.
The father began abusing the girl when she was 5 years old. He had also held the girl's head under water in a creek, wrapped her in barbed wire, forced her to eat hot chilies and threatened her with a chain saw.
The mother began teaching her daughter how to sexually arouse her father from the age of 8.
The father was convicted of 73 offenses and his wife of 13 offenses in June. They denied all charges.
Judge Sarah Huggett described the crimes as "atrocious in the extreme." She also described the father as "selfish, depraved and sadistic."
The victim, now aged 24, first complained about her parents in 2011, while she was a patient in a psychiatric hospital ward. Police arrested them in 2013.
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