Father jailed for abuse

Treatment of son labelled as ‘disgusting’

A CAIRNS father forced his son to lick urine off the floor, beat the soles of his feet, destroyed his toys in front of him, and refused to let him go to the toilet, a court has heard.

“Appalling, disgusting and degrading … cowardly and despicable,” were some of the words Judge Ian Dearden used to describe a raft of charges to which the man pleaded guilty in Cairns District Court on Thursday.

The charges included torture, animal cruelty and 11 charges of common assault.

The court heard that the man, 47, who cannot be named because it would identify his victims, had over a period of 13 months inflicted horrendous abuse on one of his children.

In a separate incident he had thrown another of his children into a fence, breaking four wooden palings.

The abuse included forcing the boy to do domestic chores during the day and night for hours, after which physical discipline would follow if the man was not satisfied.

He would make the child wash all the dishes for a sixmember household, despite the household having a functional dishwasher.

The man made the boy cut grass with scissors, sometimes in the dark and rain, made him lick urine off the floor, and when the child refused he would hit him with a wooden spoon.

The court was told he would not give the boy toys and books, and at one stage destroyed his toys in front of him.

He would refuse the boy the toilet, force him to sleep outside, and at other times make him sit in the corner of a room and throw things at him to prevent him from sleeping.

The litany of abuse included kicking the boy in the face and the penis, submerging his head in water, and beating him on the soles of his feet to hide his injuries.

He punched the boy with such force that four times he had lost consciousness.

He would not let the boy attend school as punishment and to hide injuries, and the boy missed numerous days of school over 13 months between March 2020 and and May 2021.

The charges included making the boy eat leftovers, a number of threats to kill, and one of pressing a knife against his neck. On another occasion, the man accused the child of allowing the family’s dog to escape when it got in a fight.

The man subsequently fed the dog sleeping tablets which killed it, and he made the family dispose of the dog’s body by dumping it over a bridge.

Judge Dearden conceded some of the man’s behaviour flowed from his childhood, when he had suffered at hands of “appallingly violent father”, but he had inflicted an “extraordinary level of emotional suffering”.

He sentenced the man to eight years’ imprisonment. He will be eligible for parole on November 11, 2024.