Tributes paid to campaigner Victoria Spry
THE brother of Victoria Spry said his sister wanted to be remembered for her mission to help children, as he paid tribute to her.
Christopher Spry spoke following the death of Victoria, who has passed away aged 35.
She, Christopher and their foster sister Aloma were fostered by Eunice Spry, a woman dubbed ‘Britain’s most sadistic mother,’ and subjected to sickening physical and mental torture for nearly 20 years.
She eventually managed to escape and raise the alarm and Spry was jailed for 14 years, reduced to 12 on appeal and released in 2014.
Brave Victoria later worked with
I think her legacy will be the work she was doing to help the next wave of social workers to spot cases like ours earlier on Christopher Spry
social workers to help them spot the signs of abuse and wrote a book about her experiences called ‘Tortured.’
Her death is not being treated as suspicious and an inquest is expected to open later this week.
Her foster brother, Christopher, said Victoria wanted to be remembered for her mission to help children.
Paying tribute on the BBC he said: “The work she was doing with the Gloucestershire Safeguarding Board and social services was because she wanted ours to be the last ‘horror case’ for Gloucestershire.
“I think her legacy will be the work she was doing to help the next wave of social workers to spot cases like ours earlier on.”
Victoria, Spry’s oldest victim, had sticks forced down her throat and was tied up naked and blindfolded.
She endured 17 years of torture before she escaped and went to police and Spry was brought to justice.
But in spite of her nightmare upbringing brave Victoria went on to work as a consultant with social services in Gloucestershire.
Speaking in 2015, she said she wanted to draw on her own experience and to do further child protection studies.
Victoria said: “My past helped me enormously. It is really nice to be going to the same office where I was let down as a little one, now as a young woman helping other children.” She added: “I was offered the opportunity to write the book nine years ago when Eunice was found guilty but I turned that away because it was the worst time possible.
“I wanted to concentrate on surgery and educating myself. As I started to get older, my brother and sister had written about it and they got a lot of understanding from people about it.
“It was really quite a liberating experience, doing the book but there are lots of other reasons.”
She only escaped when she was allowed to accompany her younger brother to Jehovah’s Witness meetings in Tewkesbury, aged 17.
She broke down and told everything to a young couple in the group who smuggled her out the house just before Christmas 2004.
It took three weeks to build up the courage to tell the police.
Eunice Spry, now 76, of Tewkesbury, was convicted of 26 charges of child abuse against children in her foster care in April 2007.
She was sentenced to 14 years’ imprisonment and ordered to pay £80,000 costs.
In sentencing, the judge told Spry that it was the “worst case in his 40 years practising law”.
She was arrested when police raided her home in Tewkesbury in February 2005.
Following Spry’s conviction, Gloucestershire County Council apologised for the “shortcomings” in its care system.
Vital information which could have alerted social workers to the abuse was not shared by the various bodies involved.
Her oldest foster son, Christopher Spry, nicknamed ‘Child C,’ published a book of the same name about his childhood living with her. Foster daughter, Alloma Gilbert, published Deliver Me From Evil. Victoria Spry published Tortured in April 2015.