A foster son of the woman dubbed Britain’s most sadistic mother said she tried to justify her horrendous abuse against her family by telling them they were ‘the devil’s children’.
Christopher Spry, 31, was subjected to brutal physical beatings and mental torture at the hands of Eunice Spry, now 76, who was jailed for 14 years – but released after just seven in 2014.
Raised at a remote farmhouse in Gloucester alongside his two biological siblings; Alloma and Caleb, adopted siblings Vitoria and Charlotte and Eunice’s daughter Judith – Christopher recalled how the children were subjected to horrific attacks during her 14-year reign of terror.
Speaking on next week’s episode of Crime+Investigations’s Survivor, Christopher said Eunice was always looking for new ways to ‘shock them’, including forcing chair legs down their throats while beating their feet.
Now Christopher says that the only way he copes with his past is to pretend that it happened to someone else, because accepting the horror of what happened is too much to bear.
Christopher Spry, 31, pictured, was subjected to brutal physical beatings and mental torture at the hands of Eunice Spry and said she tried to justify her horrendous abuse against him and his siblings by telling them they were the devils children’
Eunice claimed to be a devout Jehovas Witness, saying she was punishing the children in order to save them from armageddon, but Christopher doubts that his foster mother was ever religious.
‘For quite a lot of our childhood we were told we were the devil’s children,’ he said. ‘What she was doing was to save us from armageddon. We accepted for quite a long time we were doing things wrong and that we deserved it.
‘It’s my personal view that Eunice never really believed in God. I remember praying, getting really angry that I wasn’t getting answers, I prayed every night.’
Christopher was born in 1988 to parents battling with alcohol and drug addiction, and was taken, with Alloma, to live with Eunice at the age of three.
‘We lived in quite a rough house, no carpets on the floor,’ said Christopher. ‘They were struggling. When I was around three my mother ended up going into hospital with meningitis.
Eunice Spry was found guilty on all counts of child abuse and jailed for 14 years. She only spent seven years behind bars
‘She had to have surgery for that and it went wrong, she nearly ended up paralysed. So that was when Eunice first came in to the scene.’
Christopher said he ‘vividly remembers’ going to Eunice’s home for the first time – revealing she had set up her home to appear as the perfect mother.
‘Half the living room had been tuned into a den for children, it was amazing. Massive garden with sandpits and sheds, set up for kids. The first initial months I remember with great fondness.’
Also under Eunice’s care was Charlotte, Victoria and Eunice’s biological daughter Judith – but it was clear from the start that some children would be more favoured than others, with Victoria, Alloma and Christopher bearing the brunt of the abuse.
Christopher had been in Eunice’s care for less than a year when signs of her abusive personality began to show.
‘The first change I actively remember was Eunice becoming obsessed with food in the cupboards,’ he explained.
‘Some chocolate went missing in the house, Eunice become obsessed with this. To this day I remember her eyes, her eyes were just so cold. Victoria and myself and Alloma were taken to Charlotte’s room, which was like a palace.
‘We were all made to stand in a semicircle with our bare feet and she got a large chair leg and started smashing the tops of our feet. I remember just being horrified and so scared. It wasn’t the pain, it was watching my siblings have the same pain and being able to see their reaction.’
In 1992, Christopher’s parents gave birth to Caleb- who was also left in the care of Eunice. He says that it was at the age of five he noticed the abuse was reserved for just him Victoria and Alloma.
Victoria was subjected to sickening physical and mental torture for nearly 20 years by evil Eunice Spry. She forced Victoria and two other children in her care to eat their own excrement and vomit
‘We were the ones who received all the physical abuse and most of the mental abuse’, he said. ‘I think it was because she had both Caleb and Charlotte from birth and maybe there’s that maternal link. We never really held it against them, we were so deep under Eunice’s spell.’
Initially, Christopher and his siblings did attend school – but they were quickly pulled out by Eunice when teachers began to question the bruising on him and his sisters.
In 1994, Eunice moved her foster children to a remote farm house in Gloucestershire where she locked up Christopher and Victoria for a month with very little food, next to no water and no toilet.
‘We nearly died in that room,’ he said. ‘She would throw a scrap of bread in and I remember at one point wanting to kill Victoria so I could have all the bread. For that to go through the brain of a seven or eight-year-old is ridiculous.’
In 2000 things turned even more tragic when Charlotte died in a fatal car crash on the way back from a trip to Weston-super-Mare with Eunice’s parents.
Victoria Spry, pictured, who suffered years of abuse at the hands of her adopted mother Eunice Spry, was found dead in her ground-floor flat last year
Caleb Gilbert, pictured, admits he still lives in fear of bumping into his evil stepmother on the street
‘Charlotte and Judith both died instantly, Victoria and Caleb were in the back seats we don’t know how they survived, they were airlifted away from the scene, the car was three and a half feet long.
‘We were taken into room by Eunice and she just told us matter of fact, Charlotte and Judith are dead. She looked at me straight in the eyes and said, “I wish it was you”.’
Christopher says the abuse ‘turbocharged’ following Charlotte’s death, with beatings increasing from three times a day to six and Christopher recalls being force fed so much washing up liquid that he knew which brand it was purely by the taste.
He and his siblings were forced to eat rat droppings, cat food, dog food, lard, and on occasions their own excrement and vomit.
‘The day to day abuse was happening all the time, we were beaten daily and she was always looking for new ways to try and shock us. She became obsessed with sticks down the throat, so she would be beating your feet and if you were screaming she would shove something down your throat, a chair leg usually.’
Victoria was injured during the accident, but Eunice prevented Victoria from having therapy to help her walk again, keeping her in a wheelchair for five years so she could receive substantial compensation.
Eunice Spry was arrested when police raided her home in Tewkesbury in February 2005 and found children living in horrific conditions like the ones pictured here
After keeping her children in conditions like this pictured, Jehovah’s Witness Eunice Spry, now 76, of Tewkesbury in Gloucestershire, was convicted of 26 charges of child abuse in April 2007
The judge who convicted Eunice Spry said the abuse and the conditios the children had to live in (pictured) made it was the ‘worst case in his 40 years practising law’
As the children got older they began to resist the abuse more, with Alloma living in a YMCA after constantly running away, while Christopher was living with Eunice’s parents full time as a carer in 2004.
Soon, two kind church-goers noticed the bruising on Victoria and took her to a Jehovah’s Witness home in what Christopher called ‘the beginning of the end for her realm of torture’.
After noticing that Victoria wasn’t coming to church on Sundays, Christopher ran away and Eunice reported him to the police. When word spread to the same church-goers that had helped Victoria, they reached out to Christopher.
The couple called the police, who examined Christopher’s injuries and questioned him for evidence against Eunice.
Speaking of facing his foster mother in court, he said: ‘You are reliving every bit of that abuse. Being asked questions as if you have made the whole thing up, even though you are covered in scars, damaged beyond repair’
Eunice denied everything showing ‘no emotion or remorse’, and on March 20, 2007, was found guilty on all counts of child abuse and jailed for 14 years. However this was reduced to 12 on appeal, and Eunice only spent seven years behind bars.
20th March 2007 she was found guilty on all counts of child abuse and jailed for 14 years. Her sentence was reduced on appeal to 12 years, and she was released after just seven.
Despite his decade of abuse and tragedy, Chris is determined not to let his past define him, insisting: ‘I try and live life to its max’
Speaking of how he has dealt with the abuse, Christopher said: ‘We’ve really had to, to survive this mentally, we’ve had to normalise the abuse in our heads. I’ve had moments where I’ve tried to think about it too much and ended up on the wrong side of mental health.
‘In my head I almost see it as someone else life and I can tell their story. I think if I truly accepted it was me being beaten and having TCP thrown down my throat, I would probably go insane.’
But tragically, Victoria was unable to cope with memories of the abuse she suffered and in September last year was was found dead in the ground floor flat she shared with her boyfriend, having taken her own life at the age of just 35.
Despite his decade of abuse and tragedy, Chris is determined not to let his past define him, insisting: ‘I try and live life to its max, to its fullest and i’m not going to let her define me. My future is mine and i’m running towards it.’
Survivors with Denise Welch airs Monday 24 May at 9pm on Crime + Investigation
Source: | This article originally belongs to Dailymail.co.uk
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