Father jailed for cruelty to child

Every time little Sarah Body tried to go to sleep, her enraged father hit her and screamed at her, a court heard yesterday.

The 4-year-old's ordeal at the hands of her 42-year-old father, contract scaffolder Ronald Colin Body, of Swanson, lasted nine hours.

It ended only when he developed a headache.

In the High Court at Auckland yesterday, Justice Colin Nicholson told Body: "That is a long and cruel period of ill-treatment."

He sentenced Body, who was represented by Bob Hesketh, to four years' jail.

Body had admitted injuring his wife, causing her grievous bodily harm, cruelty to a child, assault on a child and breaching a protection order.

Prosecutor David McNaughton told the court that on one occasion Body broke his wife's ribs and on another, her neck. She had to wear a neck brace for four months.

Mr McNaughton said he accepted that the cruelty to the little girl occurred after Body suffered a head injury in a serious motor accident.

In that incident, the court was told, Body's wife had heard screaming after she put the girl to bed.

She went into the child's bedroom, where she found her posters ripped off the wall, toys scattered and broken on the floor and Body smacking his daughter.

Later, Body put the girl on a couch and made his wife sit in a corner. He kept the child awake all night. Every time she went to sleep Body hit her with a 1.2m plastic paddle and screamed at her.

He called her names and said she should learn not to complain and do as she was told.

Eventually his wife left with the children and went to live at a women's refuge.

Justice Nicholson said it was a sad and harrowing chronicle.

Sentencing Body, he said he had made a significant discount for the defendant's guilty pleas, his genuine remorse and his efforts to rehabilitate himself.

Herald Online feature: Violence at home

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