By TONY STICKLEY
A couple who subjected three children to "boot camp" ill-treatment have lost their appeals against conviction and sentence.
The children were made to eat rotten food, take freezing baths and wake before dawn to do menial chores, including cleaning the toilet with a toothbrush.
The children had spoken of being woken by having cold water poured on them.
David Frederick Mead, 33, and the children's mother, Irene Patricia Molloy, 35, were found guilty in the High Court at Hamilton of four charges of wilfully ill-treating the children, aged 15, 10 and 7.
Mead was sentenced to 2 1/2 years' imprisonment and Molloy to 12 months'.
Three of the charges referred to physical and mental abuse, including excessive menial domestic chores, deprivation of food, cold baths, verbal abuse, force-feeding of cold and rotten food and hitting.
The court of appeal upheld the three guilty verdicts on a two-to-one split over whether the trial judge was correct in telling the jury that while the verdicts had to be unanimous, they did not have to be unanimous on the particular form of ill-treatment.
For instance, the judge said, some jurors might convict because of the deprivation of food, cold baths and verbal abuse but others might convict because of the force-feeding of cold, rotten food and hitting.
The issue did not arise in the fourth count, a specific incident of forcing a child to eat cloves.
Appeal Court judge Justice Ted Thomas said that the children were cruelly ill-treated by Mead for five months in 1999 after he moved into their mother's Te Aroha home.
Molloy did nothing to help her children and even participated at times.
A neighbour had described the household as being like a boot camp.
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