Pair forced children to eat rotten food: Crown

Three children were forced to eat rotten food, dumped in cold baths together and had water splashed across their faces as early as 4 am to wake them to do chores, a crown prosecutor said in court yesterday.

The Hamilton District Court heard that the chores could include cleaning the toilet with a toothbrush.

In one case, the youngest of the children, a 7-year-old girl, was forced to eat a packet of ground cloves in an ordeal that lasted hours and left her vomiting.

David Frederick Mead, aged 32, unemployed, and Irene Patricia Molloy, 34, a housewife, both of Waitoa, face four counts each of wilful ill-treatment of a child.

Mead also faces five charges of injuring with intent to injure and five of assault.

Molloy also faces one charge of injuring with intent to injure and one of assault.

The charges relate to a period from January to June last year, when the three children - two girls then aged 7 and 10, and a boy aged 15 - were under the pair's care in Te Aroha, in the Waikato.

Crown prosecutor Louella Dunn told Judge Robert Wolff that the children had been subjected to regular physical assaults, excessive menial chores, and cruel treatment.

"The Crown's case is that it's been severe, it's been prolonged, and it has been physical and mental abuse," she said.

Ms Dunn said the children had had cold water poured on their faces as early as 4 am to get them up to do household chores.

They were often forced to scrub the bathroom and toilet with a toothbrush, and would not be allowed to attend school if they had not finished.

They were also dumped in cold baths together, sometimes fully clothed and sometimes naked.

The children were force-fed rotten food and would have meals spoiled by Mead. He once mixed lime drinking juice and mayonnaise into the boy's meal.

Ms Dunn said the younger girl was forced to eat the packet of cloves as punishment.

In testimony via closed-circuit television, the girl said she had been forced to eat the cloves because Mead and Molloy believed she had put salt and pepper in the tea and coffee.

"They got teaspoons and they chucked it down my throat. I had to eat the whole box."

She said the ordeal lasted hours and she was given milk to wash the cloves down after she began vomiting.

She and her siblings were subject to regular beatings from Mead, who would often hit them with a belt or kick them.

Mead's lawyer, Warren Pyke, asked the girl why she had not revealed some of the troubling aspects of her treatment by Mead and Molloy in a videotaped interview with a social worker in September last year. The girl did not reply.

When asked by Mr Pyke whether several of the incidents she claimed occurred had even happened, she replied: "Yes, they did."

The trial is continuing.