Catalogue of abuse couple inflicted on young boys
Details of the horrific abuse inflicted upon two young boys were laid bare over the course of the Liam Fee trial.
Details of the horrific abuse inflicted upon two young boys were laid bare over the course of the Liam Fee trial.
The two youngsters, both of primary school age, were subjected to painful and degrading treatment at the women's hands.
The court heard that among a catalogue of examples of bad treatment, the boys were:
- Denied access to the toilet then forced to take freezing showers when they wet the bed; - Beaten, smacked and called humiliating names; - Deprived of food as a punishment; - One was tied to a locked home-made cage at night-time; - Another was tied naked to a chair and left alone in the dark in a room with snakes and rats in boxes.
The evidence emerged over two weeks of evidence during the trial, in which more than 20 hours of recorded interviews conducted separately with the boys were played to the jury.
The Crown began with hearing from the youngster the couple wrongly blamed for Liam's death, who was questioned by a female police officer and a male social worker on various occasions in the weeks after the toddler died.
The interviews started when the small boy dressed in jeans and a T-shirt walked in and sat on a sofa, tucking his legs up beside him.
The two adults spent a great deal of time building up a rapport with him.
As would be expected with many young children speaking to adults they do not know, the conversation started with him replying in one-word answers, mainly "yes'' and "fine''.
He came out of his shell to talk about his favourite toys and movies but retreated again when they started to ask him questions relevant to the case.
Then, slowly, details of the horror of what he endured emerged.
The jury heard the boy tell how he was not allowed to get up to go to the toilet during the night, which sometimes meant he would wet the bed.
He told interviewers he would then ''have to get a shower, a cold one'' as a punishment, which would leave him ''shaking''.
The boy said he would then have to stand on a towel in the corridor of the house and would have to drip dry there, sometimes without even a vest on.
Nyomi Fee would show she was angry by calling him ''dirty boy''.
He later told how he had been tied to a locked home-made cage during the night.
The boy told police his hands and feet would be bound with cable ties to the makeshift cage constructed out of a fireguard and bars.
He told how his hands would swell up and was called ''pudding hands'' by Fee.
The child also described how he would sometimes be naked in the cage and had his hands tied behind his back on occasion.
At other times he would be tied to a cot with a dressing-gown cord and coat belts.
The same boy also said he fell unconscious when Fee put her foot on his neck as he lay on a floor.
She also smacked and punched the child during the attack.
The trial further heard how the boy tried to flee on three separate occasions from the Fees' house, and had even made a rope out of bandages to aid his escape.
"I tried to run away because of bad treatment,'' the boy said.
Later, it was the turn of the second boy, who said he was banned from going to the toilet in the night but given cold showers "for 15 or 20 minutes'' if he wet the bed.
One day he spent the whole day in a cold shower, drip drying in between.
In the video interviews, the boy said Fee tied him naked to a chair and left him alone in a room all night in the dark, with snakes and rats in boxes.
The boy, who said he is scared of the dark, said the snakes included a boa constrictor which he was told "eats naughty little boys''.
He said he "felt unsafe'' with both women and was "scared'' of being punished when he stayed with them.