Police have taken out AVOs against two members of the Colt incest family, Charlie Colt (above) and his niece Raylene. Photo / News Corp
Police have taken out AVOs against two members of the Colt incest family, Charlie Colt (above) and his niece Raylene. Photo / News Corp
Warning graphic content:
Notorious Australian incest family the Colts are due in court after police issued orders for a female relative who lived on the squalid farm where the depraved clan was found.
Police have issued Apprehended Violence Orders (AVOs) against Charlie Colt and his niece Raylene Colt to stay away from Petra Colt, a younger daughter of the family matriarch, Betty.
Police had 12 children removed four years ago from the Colt family's squalid farm where the children lived in filthy conditions, couldn't speak intelligible English and sex took place between brothers and sisters and uncles and nieces.
The interim AVOs, which a Sydney court heard last week had yet to be served, were taken out early this month.
Charlie Colt was the subject of unconfirmed allegations that he had engaged in a sexual relationship with one of his nieces, aged nine, who was also his biological daughter.
DNA testing found that 11 were the product of a sexual relationship by their mothers with either a brother, father or other close male relative.
Another Colt relative, who was found living in Victoria, had three children from a relationship with her brother.
Hidden in the hills behind the picturesque farming community of Boorowa, the Colt family farm was a scene of such depravity that its discovery shocked police, health and social workers.
Unknown to the 2000 citizens of the town in a fertile valley amid the southwestern slopes of NSW, the dark family secret of multi-generational incest began to unravel in 2012.
One of the filthy sheds on the remote scrub block where authorities found the Colt family living in shocking conditions in the winter of 2012. Photo / News Corp Australia
Four generations of intimate relations among the Colts had taken place in South Australia, Victoria, Western Australia and finally come to NSW.
Moving state to state, possibly to evade detection, the family came to notice when authorities were alerted there were children living in the hills who didn't attend school.
Then one of the children who was attending Boorowa primary school was overhead saying "my sister is pregnant and we don't know which of my brothers is the father".
In July 2012, Boorowa farmers watched a convoy of police in four-wheel drives, a police bus and an ambulance drive up an old stock route to a remote bush block in the untamed scrub of old bushranger territory.
What they discovered on the Colt family farm wouldn't soon be forgotten.
In a clearing in the woods, they found 38 adults and children living in two filthy caravans, two decrepit sheds and several tents without electricity, running water or a toilet.
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.
Charlie Colt, dressed as Santa on the family farm, told news.com.au the Colt children were not related despite the findings of DNA tests. Photo / News Corp Australia
The children were unwashed and wore dirty clothes, and were shy and made little eye contact.
Some had oddly-formed features, which scientific tests would later reveal was a result of "homozygosity" or identical gene patterns of both of the children's parents.
For the posse of authorities who had ridden onto the farm, it was a social time bomb exploding before their eyes.
As one police officer later reportedly told her colleagues, she would never get over it.
Raylene, who is named in the new AVO, had a daughter Kimberly who at the age of 13 was underweight, unable to clean her teeth, use toilet paper or comb her hair.
Like most of the other children, she had fungal infections in her toenails that were so bad she required urgent podiatry.
She also needed urgent dental work for cavities and gingivitis.
The other children had eye, dental and fungal infections. One 15-year-old soiled himself, wet his bed and had the skills of a kindergarten pupil.
The children allegedly tortured puppies and cats on the farm and mutilated their genitals.
Kimberly revealed to social workers and others that she had "sucked Dwayne", her mother Raylene's younger brother.
Colt family child with a horse on the farm in the remote hills behind Boorowa, NSW where the children lived in squalor. Photo / News Corp Australia
Like 14 children found both on the farm and at at a carvan park in Victoria, Dwayne is the product of two closely related members of the Colt family.
Three of the girls aged seven, eight and nine claimed that their uncle, Charlie Colt, was also their father. The nine year-old also claimed Charlie Colt had sex with her.
The Children's Court removed the children from their four mothers, Betty who was then aged 46, Rhonda, 47, Martha, 33, and Raylene, Betty's 30-year-old daughter and the mother of Kimberly.
The property has been since sold to an owner who has nothing to do with the Colt family.
NSW Children's Court president Judge Peter Johnstone then took the rare step of publishing its ruling, changing the names of each family member to protect the children's identities.
The women claimed outsiders had fathered their children - a fruit picker from South Australia, a wheat worker and a Swedish backpacker. But DNA tests told otherwise.
The children would reveal that Martha Colt and her brother Charlie slept together in one of the tents every night.
Dwayne and Bobby are the sons of Betty Colt, the family matriarch who was jailed in 2014 for plotting to kidnap two of her sons back from foster carers.
Dwayne told case workers that he had sex with his sisters and that he was told to keep secret the fact that his father was also his grandfather (Betty Colt's late father, Tim).
Apart from being the victim of sexual abuse by uncles and other relatives on the farm, Kimberly was also an instigator.
Colt family property in the hills behind the tiny farming community of Boorowa, which was astonished when police discovered the incest clan. Photo / News Corp Australia
In foster care, Kimberly was observed placing her hand inside the skirt of her aunty Carmen - who is five years younger than Kimberly.
Carmen confirmed to a carer that Kimberly had been touching her "girl", the word the Colt children used for "vagina".
Judge Johnstone's findings stated that when "questioned about this behaviour, Kimberly reportedly stated, with a smile, that she engages in such behaviour because 'she likes it'."
Kimberly said her uncles tied her to a tree on the Colt property and had sex with her.
Her mother Raylene did nothing about the regular sexual assault inflicted on her by her uncles.
Kimberly also stated that Dwayne had intercourse with her and "made me sore because he was too hard".
She also told caseworkers that her uncle Joe "had sex with me only once" and told her not to tell anyone.
But she said that when she told her mother Raylene about these incidents, Raylene became angry and told her it was her fault and that she should not have sex with the boys who were "too big".
Raylene would later submit through her lawyer in the Children's Court that she had not been informed of the abuse.
Raylene's lawyer also argued that Kimberly "suffers from an extremely low level of intelligence and is easily confused" and was "difficult to understand".
Judge Johnstone concluded that Kimberly was "the daughter of related parents ... either half siblings, uncle/niece, aunt/nephew, double first cousins or grandparent/grandchild".
"It follows that the assertion of Raylene Colt that Kimberly's father was a man called Sven, a backpacker from Sweden or Switzerland, is wrong," Judge Johnstone said.
"The true father of Kimberly is someone from the Colt family.
"I am satisfied, therefore, that Raylene Colt engaged in consanguineous, incestuous sexual relations within the Colt family group."
Another Colt family member, then 27-year-old Tammy disclosed that she had been sexually abused within the Colt family from the age of 12, when other family members began having sex with her" and that "her mother, Betty Colt, encouraged this activity".
Tammy had three children fathered by her brother Derek, one of whom had died from a rare genetic disease.
The baby, Sally, had been born extremely dysmorphic (abnormal looking), with a thick short neck and low set ears, consistent with the genetic disorder called Zellweger syndrome.
Tammy's remaining children were removed from her care in Victoria.
In November 2014, Betty Colt was jailed for 12 months over a plot to kidnap two of her sons back from foster carers.
Charlie Colt subsequently told news.com.au that the genetic testing tendered in the Children's Court proceedings - which said 11 of the children removed had parents who were related - was "unreliable".
Mr Colt described the allegations against his family as "disgusting".
"If you look at all the children, I don't think there's too many that look alike, to say that they're interrelated," Charlie Colt said.
"Because a little girl's teeth doesn't quite form properly in the gums, I've travelled the world and seen that thousands of times," he said.
"You say her eyes aren't quite symmetric, you may be right, but that does not mean that she's a product of an evil act.
"For the rest of my life, even if I walk through court tomorrow, I'm going to be called that person that raped that nine-year-old ... it makes me feel sick to the stomach, it makes me feel bewildered and I am absolutely disappointed in the justice system."
The AVOs are due back in a Sydney court next month.
