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Adopted daughter of sadistic Tewkesbury mother Eunice Spry speaks out weeks before Spry is let of prison

By Western Daily Press  |  Posted: May 30, 2014





The country’s most sadistic mother will be let out of jail next month and could be rehomed just miles from the adopted daughter she brutally tortured for nearly 20 years.

Eunice Spry, now 70, from Tewkesbury, in Gloucestershire, was jailed for 12 years after she was convicted of disgusting child abuse against her two foster children and an adopted daughter.

Evil Spry routinely beat, abused and starved the terrified youngsters - identified in court as Child A, B and C.


She forced them to drink bleach and urine, eat their own vomit, stand naked and cold for hours on end and even sandpapered the skin from the face of one terrified child.

Adopted daughter Victoria Evans, now 28, Child A, is speaking for the first time about the daily horrors she endured for 19 years before she bravely escaped and told police.

Judge Simon Darwall-Smith, at Bristol Crown Court, told Spry that this was the worst case he had come across in 40 years in law.


Tragic Victoria was once tied up naked and left blindfolded - for THREE months.

Victoria was given a wheelchair after she miraculously survived a car crash to help her in the months after she left hospital.

But despite a rapid recovery, evil Spry banned her from walking until her leg muscles wasted away so she could continue her reign of terror, sandpapering the skin from her face.

In spite of the horrors she suffered, brave Victoria has miraculously flourished, teaching herself to read and write, going to college and is now engaged to the love of her life.

She has agreed to reveal her identity for the first time in a bid to show her mother she has not been broken - and beg authorities to reconsider housing the monster just 25 miles away.


In one horrifying early assault Spry left defenceless Victoria bleeding from the mouth, her lips and gums cut to ribbons, after she prised the youngster's jaws open with a spoon to feed her.

She said: "I don't remember it, but the abuse started pretty much straight away - I know that from her children who were there.

"She was obsessed with being perfect. She had to look like the Von Trapp family.

"But when I came to her I wasn't perfect. I was a traumatised little girl. I hadn't been socialised like children should be. I was wetting the bed, I wasn't eating. I had been taken away from my real parents.

"I don't remember this, but the first abuse I know of was when I was around age two.

"I didn't want to come off milk, but my mum said 'she should be on solids'.

"She held me down and prised my teeth open with a metal spoon. There was blood pouring down my face.

"I would wet the bed and she would rub the sheets in my face, then she would tie me to the potty. I wasn't fitting into her ideal."

Little Victoria got respite from her mother's torment during a very brief stint at school - before Spry pulled her out of classes under the guise of 'home schooling'.

But even at school four-year-old Victoria was not free from her abuser's tricks.

"She would drive every lunchtime to watch me," recalled Victoria.

"I wasn't allowed to talk to other children or play with them, and I would get an absolute bollocking from her.

"She would say 'I saw you talking to someone else'. I had no idea how she knew, and she told me 'I have a magic eye, I can see what's going on'.

"There were grave concerns that I wasn't being fed lunch like the rest of the children so she told me to come home for my lunch.

"I went home once and she wasn't there so I came back to school and said I hadn't had lunch.

"I got beaten to a pulp because I told them, the teachers.

"She pushed my lips to cut into my teeth, she would throw me down the stairs."

Evil Spry split living between a home near Gloucester and a farm house in Eckington, Worcestershire, left to her in a will by a man she apparently cared for.

The ramshackle farm house - surrounded by trees and away from prying eyes - became what Victoria called the "torture house".

"She would force the sticks down our throats. I will never forget the taste of wood, and blood and saliva as she pulled them out."

One of the most harrowing stretches of abuse inflicted on Victoria came when she was aged eight or nine.

A single chicken nugget went missing from the fridge, and when nobody owned up, Victoria was tied up naked in an upstairs bedroom - surviving on crusts and water - for three months.

Recalling the horror, Victoria said: "Nobody owned up. I was tied up naked up in the bedroom. I was left there for three months.

"I was tied up with rope and blindfolded, and fed on crusts and water. It was a horrendous time. I was completely naked. It was so cold.

"I would wet the floor and she would make me drink it up, lap it up from the floor.

"When I would retch, she would say to me 'you are weak minded' and would say 'it's mind over matter'."

A favorite punishment of Spry's would involve Victoria leaning her back against the wall in an excruciating half-seated position.

Watching television - a treat Victoria was never allowed - she would swing a ruler with a leather fringe round her finger.

As her feet slipped forward with sweat she would whip her on the toes until they bled.

In September 2000, when Victoria was just 14, she was given a rare treat of going on holiday to Pontins in Weston-super-Mare.

While she was kept indoors, it was a break from the beatings and Victoria was allowed to keep a doll - one of the only toys she ever had - given to her by her grandmother while on the holiday.

But on the drive back home the car was involved in a horrific accident on the M5.

A lorry driver - who was later convicted in court - smashed into the back to the car while fiddling with his radio, forcing the vehicle under another lorry ahead.

Victoria broke her neck in the crash and was left hanging and pinned.

She was put in an induced coma for months, but as soon as she woke up, Spry blamed her for the crash, cruelly claiming she only survived because "the devil looks after his own".

Victoria recalled: "I had a broken neck, leg fractures, a broken pelvis, hips, small of my back, both arms, legs, elbows, wrists, and had internal injuries too."

Drifting in and out of sleep, suffering horrific nightmares while she recovered, Spry would tell her to "shut the fuck up" as soon as the nurse's backs were turned.

She added: "As soon as I was able she held me by the throat telling me to tell me what happened.

"I told her about how we had stopped to go to the seaside on the way home and I was asked if I needed the toilet and I had said I didn't need to go.

"She said I had killed the others involved because I didn't go to the toilet.

"She said, 'the devil looks after his own his own, that's why you are still here'. I believed her.

"It got to the point that I wished I had gone, I wished that somebody would put me out of my misery."

After the accident, doctors told Spry that Victoria would need to be in a wheelchair for a few months, while she built up her strength.

But the sadistic monster forced her to stay in a wheelchair for FOUR years in a cynical bid to maximise the disability living payments she received.

Initially Victoria would use her feet to shuffle along the hallways, but after being punished she stopped, eventually suffering such terrible muscle wastage she was unable to walk.

But the punishment continued, with Spry forcing her to crawl from her chair onto the filthy hallway floor to sleep at every night.

"She would pull me out of the chair by my hair, I remember being kicked around the kitchen. I was kicked and kicked and kicked," she said.

She would drag her around the house by her neck, slamming her into walls, digging her nails into her skin and even sandpapered the skin from her face.

When Victoria was 17, she went to Jehovah's Witness meetings in Tewkesbury.

For the first time in her life, the teenager met people who not only cared for her, but noticed the horrific bruises and strangulation marks she was unable to hide under thick clothes.

Spry came under question from the group, but blamed the injuries on an older step child, telling Victoria to do the same.

But eventually the lies became too much, and the teenager broke down, telling 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, but brave Victoria eventually outlined the darkest details of the years of abuse.

"I was there the longest, I was there from when I was a little baby," she said.

"She was all I knew, and despite it all, I still felt loyal to her."

Spry - who has always denied any abuse - was arrested.

Investigating officers scoured her two properties and recovered the bloody and splintered sticks she had shoved down Victoria’s throat, as well as teeth knocked out in the process.

Amongst the squaller in the homes they found unposted letters Victoria had written - but forgotten about - begging neighbours to 'please be my new mummy'.

But despite the horrors, and free from the clutches of Spry, Victoria set about starting her life again.

Victoria went to college to learn to read and write, and enrolled on maths and english classes, before taking up a course in hairdressing.

She completed a course in childcare and dedicated four years to working in schools, before ongoing health problems - stemming from her abuse - forced her to give up work.

But the keen photographer, who is devoted to the care of her two dogs, is engaged to her boyfriend of five years, living happily in Gloucestershire.

She said: "The dogs have really helped me through it all. I wouldn't have been able to do it without them. The fact they've always accepted me, has helped me through."

She hopes one day to set up a charity to help other abused adults - and is currently looking for help to achieve her dream - and wants to write a book about her life.

She said: "Nobody was there. Nobody picked me up.

"There is nothing out there, and I want to change that, and I am appealing to anyone who can help me to please get in touch.

"I feel I have so much to give, but need help to do it."

A few weeks ago she was contacted by the probation service warning her that Spry was due to be released in July.

Victoria said: "And now they want to house her just down the road from me. It's dreadful, it's heartbreaking.


"Why do they have to just slap her in the next county to me? I asked why, and they said she requested it, and it has been granted.


"But I have got on with my life, and knowing she is so close will be awful.



"One day I want to settle down and have children. As long as they are honest kids who wake up in the morning happy, I'll be happy.

"I'd try to be the best mum in the world. You can't mould kids, you just have to let them be who they are.

"I wish her no harm, but I don't want her anywhere near us and I never want to see her again.


A Ministry of Justice spokesman said: “Serious offenders released on licence are subject to strict conditions and controls including restrictions of their movements.

“If they fail to comply with these conditions they can be immediately returned to prison.”

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