The Worst Incest Family Case

-Daily Mail,UK

Infamous incest family matriarch who plotted to abduct her sons from foster home may face 10 years in jail for Australia's worst incest case

• Betty Colt, member of the infamous 'Colt' incest family, is accused of plotting to kidnap her children from foster carers
• She was due to appear at a northern Sydney court on Monday where it was revealed a decision will be handed down on September 1
• Police say they foiled the alleged plan after interviewing her son Bobby, 16
• She allegedly secretly delivered a mobile and number to Bobby and other son Billy, 15
• Court heard she planned to pick up the children between 2am and 4am
• Betty could face 10 years in jail if found guilty of recruiting her son to commit a criminal act 

The matriarch of a family of 40 adults and children found living in incestuous relationships on a squalid bush block in country NSW will learn her fate next month over charges she tried to abduct two of her children.

Betty Colt, whose real name has been suppressed by the Childrens Court of NSW, was due to appear at Moss Vale Magistrates Court on Monday charged with plotting to kidnap two of her sons back from foster carers.

Ms Colt, who was found by police and welfare authorities in 2012 sharing a marital bed with her brother Charlie, and whose children aged as young as 10 years old were engaging in sex with their underage aunts and uncles, could face up to 10 years' prison. 

Her sons, aged 16 and 15, were among five of her 13 children taken from her in 2012 because they were the product of a sexual union with Ms Colt and her father, brother or another close male relative.

Ms Colt also faces charges of recruiting her son Bobby (a court appointed name) to commit a criminal act in the plot in which she allegedly planned to take the boys from their foster home in the middle of the night. 

Ms Colt had secretly given her sons a mobile phone which they kept in a plastic bag in a bush on the foster property. 

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Betty Colt, a member of the infamous 'Colt' incest family, arrives at Moss Vale local court with her lawyer

Magistrate Mary Ryan acknowledged in Moss Vale Court on Monday that a legal delay in delivery of the transcript of a hearing in June, when Bobby Colt gave evidence by video link, required the matter be held over.

A decision will be handed down on September 1.

Ms Colt, now 48, is the mother of 13 children, five of whom were likely fathered by her own father or brother.

They were among the 38 inter-related adults and children discovered two years ago living in filthy conditions in the hills surrounding a picturesque farming community nestled in a valley southwest of Sydney.

The children had facial deformities, could not speak intelligibly, did not know what a toothbrush or toilet paper were and were living in filthy caravans and tents with no running water or electricity.

The case of the Colt family is considered to be perhaps the nation's most appalling saga of child abuse and is among one of the worst accounts of incest ever made public.

The NSW Children's Court took the rare step in December last year of publishing its judgment of actions taken to remove children from the Colt family (a court-appointed pseudonym to protect identification of minors).

Four generations of intimate relations among the Colts had taken place in South Australia, Victoria, Western Australia and finally in NSW.

Moving state to state, possibly to evade detection, the scandal only came to light because of a schoolyard conversation involving one of the children living in the hills who did attend school.

One of the Colt family children was overheard saying at the school, 'My sister is pregnant and we don’t know which of my brothers is the father’.

The remark triggered a raid in July 2012, when officers from the NSW Police State Crime Command Child Sexual Abuse Squad and Family and Community Services officers turned up at the block, which lies around 30km out of the town between large established farms and untamed scrub.

They found the 40 adults and children living in two filthy caravans, two sheds and tents on an unsewered block with no plumbing.

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Betty is accused of hatching a plan to kidnap her sons from foster carers

Dirt caked the surfaces of stoves and cooking facilities, rotten vegetables lay in a refrigerator and a kangaroo was sleeping on one of the children's beds.

Exposed electric wires, bags of rubbish and chainsaws lay about.

There were no toilets, showers or baths. The children were unwashed, wore dirty clothes and almost all had fungal infections on their feet.

They were shy and made little eye contact, and the welfare officers learned that few were capable of intelligible speech.

Some had oddly-formed facial features, which scientific tests would later reveal was a result of 'homozygosity' or identical gene patterns of both of the children's parents.

As shocked as the police and welfare officers were with the squalor and the children, who seemed developmentally delayed or cognitively impaired, they were unaware immediately of the social time bomb revealing itself on the property.

What they didn't realise was the children were the result of intimate relations between brothers and sisters, and uncles and nieces and fathers and daughters. Their family threw back to a set of great-great grandparents who were a brother and sister.

The family groups on the property comprised of sisters, Rhonda, 47, Martha, 33, and Betty Colt, 46, who slept every night with her brother, Charlie, and two of Betty's daughters who each had children who proved to be from unions of related parents.

Not only were the children dirty and unschooled, they had multiple health problems and no concept of hygiene.

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The adults of family discovered living in squalor in regional NSW in July 2012, are now under investigation for child abuse

Betty's son Bobby Colt, 15, had a walking impairment, severe psoriasis and needed urgent dental work.

His speech was not understandable. He wet and soiled the bed and his learning ability was at kindergarten level.

Martha's sons Albert, 15, and Jed, 14, were similarly challenged with their speech, personal hygiene and lack of dentistry.

Betty's 14-year-old son Billy was underweight and not growing properly, had hearing and sight problems, spoke unintelligibly, had an intellectual disability and could barely read or count.

Kimberly Colt, 14, Betty's granddaughter, was underweight and unable to clean her teeth, use toilet paper or comb her hair.

She had urgent dental problems, hearing, speech and sight issues and was unable to read or write.
She threatened to cut off a caseworker's fingers.

Betty's son Brian, 12, did not understand showering and had extensively decayed teeth, and borderline normal hearing. His eyes were misaligned and he could not read, write, or recognise numbers.

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The court heard allegations she snuck a mobile phone and charger as well as a copy of her telephone number to her sons during monitored visits, with instructions for their 'escape plan'

Martha's nine-year-old daughter Ruth was neglected and malnourished. She was unable to bathe or dry herself. She did not know how to use a toilet or what toilet paper was. Her features were dysmorphic. She could not read or write, couldn't hear well and her speech was fragmented and stunted.

The caseworkers left and returned again two days later, making a further two visits and finally removed 12 children on July 18, 2012.

Taken into care, the children underwent sessions with psychologists and told mind-bending tales of intimate sexual contact between the hildren who were all related.

Betty's 14-year-old rand-daughter, Kimberly reported sexual contact with her uncle, Dwayne (betty's son) who was nine years old, while Dwayne's sister, Carmen, 8, watched on.

Dwayne and Carmen were Betty's children by a relative, DNA tests later proved.

Sisters Ruth, 7, and Nadia, 9, had sexual touching with their brothers Albert, 15, Jed, 14, and Karl, 12.

On one occasion, three brothers aged 14 years and under tied their sister, 8, and niece, 13, naked to a tree.

The accounts of incestuous underage sex filled pages of court documents.

Clinicians took mouth swabs from the children and geneticists deduced five of the Colt children had parents who were 'closely related' and another five had parents who were 'related'.

Further interviews with the three sisters revealed the astonishing story that Betty, Martha and Rhonda's maternal grandparents had been brother and sister.

Some of Betty's 13 children were probably fathered by her father, Tim, and her brother, Charlie.
Martha's children may also have been fathered by Tim.

Betty's son, Bobby, and Martha's children, Albert, Jed, Ruth and Nadia were the result of closely related parents, as were the three children of Betty's daughter, Tammy, 27, one of whom had died from a rare genetic disease called Zellweger syndrome.

Victorian Police removed Tammy's remaining two daughters when they found her living in a caravan park and she revealed her younger brother, Derek, 25, had fathered all her children.

The 12 children removed from the property, including Betty's son, Bobby, were placed with foster families or state institutions and some were in treatment programs for sexualised behaviour and psychological trauma, and they have some contact with their parents and siblings.

They have made progress with schooling and hygiene.