How Could You? Hall of Shame-UK-Victoria Evans, Alloma Gilbert,and Christopher Spry case UPDATED

During the four-week trial the jury heard harrowing evidence of how Spry subjected the children to a regime of abuse.

Update:“Three victims of a sadistic foster mum who forced them to eat their own vomit and rammed sticks down their throats have spoken out together for the first time since she was released from prison.

Alloma Gilbert, 29, Victoria Spry, 28, and Christopher Spry, 26, endured two decades of torture by their foster mother, Eunice Spry, then 70.

When the Jehovah’s Witness was jailed in 2007 for 14 years the trio finally felt safe.

But last year she was released after serving only half her sentence.

Christopher said: “She’s a thief. She stole my childhood. “She’s a torturous, evil, twisted person.

“A psycho who we’re very lucky hasn’t killed someone. It’s scary that she’s out in the public again and could do this to another child.

“She’s so good at gathering trust. We have no idea what she looks like now, so how would anybody else?”

The children, who have not disclosed their current location for safety reasons, formed a strong bond with one another to help them survive the horrendous abuse.

Christopher said: “Physically we helped each other, we’d end up cleaning each other’s wounds.

“To see each other at our weakest, that did create a bond that still stands today. We kept each other alive.”

When Alloma and Christopher, who are brother and sister, and Victoria were first fostered by Eunice Spry in 1991, they were welcomed into her home.

Alloma, now a housewife, said: “She seemed really warm. Warm enough for me to sit on her lap and feel comfortable.”

But it quickly became clear Spry favoured her biological daughter Judith and adopted daughter Charlotte.

Victoria said: “They had their own bedrooms, they were fed better food. And I was being treated as if I wasn’t a person, I had no right.”

Within months, Spry began to inflict beatings on the trio and told them they were the devil’s children.

Christopher said: “She thought I was demonised or I was working in Satan’s name and that we were the devil’s offspring.

“That’s really hard to comprehend when you’re six. To have to question your own sanity as a young kid is horrific.”

Spry would invent reasons to discipline them.

Victoria said: “She bought some shopping into the kitchen and she’d got various cat food and dog food, soups and baked beans.

“I was a little toddler and I took all the labels off as little ones do. She just went mad. She said she could no longer see what was in what can.

“She said you pick a can and whatever’s in it, you eat it. I was put in the high chair, I was tied down and it was cat food.

“I was a little tiny baby and I was retching and crying. I’d sick it back up and she’d make me eat the sick up.

“She always had to have the upper hand. That was my first real memory.”

The beatings became more regular and Spry separated the children away from anyone who could alert the authorities.

She banned them from speaking with other children and even waited outside the school gates at lunch time to make sure her orders were obeyed.

In 1994, when teachers became suspicious of the children’s cuts and bruises, Spry pulled them out of school.

The abuse now became constant throughout the day.

In 1996, she moved the family to an isolated farm in Eckington, Derbyshire.

In their new home the trio were forced to sleep in cold, rat-infested barns.

Christopher said: “It had no electric, no water, we had to use a hose pipe to try and clean ourselves.

“There was very little food and I used to eat chicken pellets to try and survive.”

The children were continually denied any meals.

Victoria said: “I lived half my childhood fantasising about eating food.

“If she could clearly see we’d eaten something she would make us vomit in front of her.”

One of Spry’s cruellest punishments was to ram sticks down the back of the children’s throats, leaving them unable to swallow afterwards.

Alloma said: “She would put it down the backs of our throats and twist the stick so it cut the back of your throat.

“It was excruciating, but I did learn to switch off. You’d concentrate on the crack in the ceiling and take your mind to a different place.

“It was so painful that you did just shut down. We were like dummies and you just didn’t really fight back.”

Christopher told how his torturer would sometimes smile as she hurt him and his siblings.

He said: “It was a mind game for her. There’d be no anger, there’d be no emotion.

“She liked what she was doing. It was almost like it was her right to do it.”

As the children were worn down by fear and starvation, the abuse became more brutal.

Christopher remembers being tied to the back of a van by his feet and dragged around a 13-acre field.

He recalled: “I was dragged round that field, my head hitting lumps of mud the size of myself,” he said.

“I blacked out multiple times. I was bleeding all over. I kept waking up and I was still being dragged.

“Then she just took the rope off the van at the end. My body had had enough, it just destroyed me.

“We’re in the middle of nowhere, there’s no one to help us.”

In September 2000, Spry’s daughter’s, Judith, 37, and Charlotte, 16, were killed in acar pile-up on the way back from a family holiday.

Miss Spry had been in the car alongside them, but survived with multiple broken bones and internal injuries.

Christopher and Alloma had been in a separate vehicle with Spry’s parents.

They’d raised some suspicions about the abuse but had not realised quite how serious things had become.

Spry conducted a string of media interviews from hospital where she appeared every inch the doting mother.

But behind closed doors, she punished the children for surviving the crash that killed her biological and adopted daughters calling them “scum.”

As Victoria began to recover, surgeons estimated she would walk again within three months.

But Spry forced her to remain wheelchair-bound for four years, warning her not to co-operate with physiotherapists that tried to encourage her in a cynical bid to maximise the disability living payments she received.

Victoria said: “At home, if she ever saw me get up and try and walk she would take the feet pieces off my wheelchair and she’d slam them into my shins.

“I wanted to walk but I couldn’t. I was frightened to.”

In 2004, Victoria plucked up the courage to confess the cruelty to a Jehovah’s Witness that asked about deep welts on her head from Spry sandpapering her face .

Alloma had already escaped the house in 2005, but Mr Spry was still living with his abuser.

Christopher said: “At first, Eunice had always told us that if the police came to get us it would be because they don’t like Jehovah’s Witnesses.

“Even though I was 16 at the time I was sticking to this plan and we denied everything.

“We knew no different. There wasn’t anything else but Eunice in my life.”

He was persuaded to return for a second police interview the next day, where he revealed all about the 18 years of barbaric abuse.

He said: “Officers were tearing up and that was a strange reaction because to us it was normal.

“We were just describing day-to-day life and they were sat there crying.”

In March 2007, Spry was jailed for 14 years for 26 offences including unlawful wounding, cruelty to a person under 16, assault occasioning actual bodily harm, perverting the course of justice and witness intimidation.

Judge Simon Darwall-Smith said it was the worst case he’d come across in his 40-year career .

Now, they are beginning to piece their lives back together.

Alloma said: “Life is great, I’ve got a new baby, a loving partner and my 10-year-old daughter.

“Life just bumbles along normally how it should be. Finally, I have some normality.”

Christopher wants to gain the qualifications he missed out on.

He said: “I’ve had the world taken away from me and then I’ve been given a second chance.

“I have a list of things I want to do. I don’t want to jump out of planes, I don’t want to do a parachute jump, I don’t want any of that.

“I just want to do things that the average child got to do. I want to take my GCSE’s, I want a chance at going to university.

“I want to watch cartoons, catch up on the millions of films I’ve missed out on.

“These are things that normal kids take for granted. I’ve got a lot of catching up to do but I’m enjoying the challenge.””

Sadistic mum forced foster children to eat their own vomit and rammed sticks down their throats[Mirror 3/13/15 by Erin Cardiff]

Update 2:“A children’s campaigner who suffered 17 years of abuse at the hands of her ‘sadistic’ foster mother had only just been released from a mental health clinic following a ‘breakdown’ in January when she was found dead at age 35.

The body of foster daughter Victoria Spry who was horrifically abused by ‘Britain’s most sadistic mother’ was found at a property in Cheltenham, with police confirming the death was not suspicious.

Victoria was subjected to sickening physical and mental torture for nearly 20 years at the hands of Eunice Spry.

The Jehovah’s Witness, now 76 , forced young Victoria and two other children in her care to eat their own excrement and vomit.

She would also ram sticks down the children’s throats, rub their faces with sandpaper and lock them naked in rooms for weeks at a time.

The author and children’s campaigner never recovered from the years of abuse at the hands of her ‘sadistic’ foster mother, her sister told MailOnline today.

The 35-year-old’s body was found in her ground floor flat in Cheltenham last Tuesday by her long-term boyfriend Anthony Smart.

Neighbours revealed that she had only been discharged from a mental health facility 14 days earlier after suffering a breakdown in January.

Alloma Gilbert, who was also tortured by their foster mother Eunice Spry, said she spoke to Victoria three weeks ago while she was undergoing treatment.

‘She tried very hard to do what she could for the sake of other children but I honestly don’t think she knew what a normal life was. She tried so hard to fight her way out of it but she succumbed. It is very sad.’

Neighbours said Victoria, who worked with social workers to spot children at risk of abuse, had been living happily with her boyfriend and her Labrador dog until January of this year when she suffered a breakdown.

In March, Miss Spry revealed in an open Facebook post that she was ‘struggling’ and was being cared for at the Honeybourne Recovery Unit in Cheltenham, which specialises in mental health.

In one of her last posts she wrote: ‘Struggling like mad but just about coping. I’m so sorry I’ve let you down and not always replied back to posts. I think the world of so many of you. Xxx’

Alloma told MailOnline: ‘I am still in a state of shock. We had actually fallen out for a number of years but she contacted me about three weeks ago via Facebook and we spoke.

‘At that time she was in a mental health facility and we spoke for a few nights. She said the facility was not bad, that the people were really nice. ‘

Today, a woman, who lived opposite her, said: ‘It was terribly sad. Her boyfriend was a lovely man, very supportive, and we would often see her out walking her dog.

‘When she had the breakdown, her flat was cleared and her boyfriend went back to living with his parents.

‘But she then moved back in to the same flat a few weeks ago and then this happened.’

There were flowers in the window of her ground floor flat and a card from a friend on her window sill that read, ‘RIP Vicky’.

Another neighbour told how she had found the father of Victoria’s boyfriend outside her house after his son made the tragic discovery.

‘He was very distressed and I invited him in,’ she said.

‘He said that it was only 14 days since Victoria was discharged from a mental health facility in the town after spending several months in hospital in Gloucester.’

During their abuse at the hands of Eunice Spry, Victoria and her foster siblings were attacked with hot pokers, machetes and cricket bats, and had their heads held under water.

She eventually managed to escape and raise the alarm, leading to Spry being jailed for 14 years, reduced to 12 on appeal – and released in 2014.

Despite her horrendous ordeal, Victoria later worked with social workers to help them spot the signs of abuse.

Victoria – who wrote a book about her experiences called ‘Tortured’ – has now passed away aged 35.

Her death is not being treated as suspicious and an inquest is expected to open later this week.

A spokesperson for Gloucestershire Police said: ‘Police were called to Pennine Road in Cheltenham shortly after 11.30am on Tuesday 22 September following reports that the body of a woman had been found inside a property.

‘The death is being treated as non-suspicious and the woman’s next of kin has been informed.

‘A file has been passed to the coroner.’

Victoria’s foster brother, Christopher, said Victoria wanted to be remembered for her mission to help children.

Paying tribute to the BBC he said: ‘The work she was doing with the Gloucestershire Safeguarding Board and social services was because she wanted ours to be the last ‘horror case’ for Gloucestershire.

‘I think her legacy will be the work she was doing to help the next wave of social workers to spot cases like ours earlier on.’

Victoria, Spry’s oldest victim, had sticks forced down her throat and was tied up naked and blindfolded.

She endured 17 years of torture before she escaped and went to police and Spry was brought to justice.

But in spite of her nightmare upbringing brave Victoria went on to work as a consultant with social services in Gloucestershire.

Speaking in 2015, she said she wanted to draw on her own experience and to do further child protection studies.

Victoria said: ‘My past helped me enormously.

‘It is really nice to be going to the same office where I was let down as a little one, now as a young woman helping other children.’

She added: ‘I was offered the opportunity to write the book nine years ago when Eunice was found guilty but I turned that away because it was the worst time possible.

‘I wanted to concentrate on surgery and educating myself.

As I started to get older, my brother and sister had written about it and they got a lot of understanding from people about it.

‘It was really quite a liberating experience, doing the book but there are lots of other reasons.’

She only escaped when she was allowed to accompany her younger brother to Jehovah’s Witness meetings in Tewkesbury, aged 17.

She broke down and told 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.

Jehovah’s Witness Eunice Spry of Tewkesbury in Gloucestershire, was convicted of 26 charges of child abuse against children in her foster care in April 2007.

She was sentenced to 14 years’ imprisonment and ordered to pay £80,000 costs.

In sentencing, the judge told Spry that it was the ‘worst case in his 40 years practising law’.

She was arrested when police raided her home in Tewkesbury in February 2005.

Following Spry’s conviction, Gloucestershire County Council apologised for the ‘shortcomings’ in its care system.

Vital information which could have alerted social workers to the abuse was not shared by the various bodies involved. ”
Revealed: Woman who suffered 17 years of hell at hands of her ‘sadistic’ foster mother was found dead aged 35 after being released from mental health clinic following ‘breakdown’ months earlier
[Daily Mail 10/2/2020 by Ross Slater and Antonia Paget ]

Update 3:“THE foster son of “Britain’s most sadistic mum” has revealed for the first time his “haunting” life inside her house of torture.

Caleb Gilbert, 28, was raised by ‘psychopath’ Eunice Spry, now 76, who inflicted horrific and sickening abuse on some of her kids.

Spry forced three – Victoria, Alloma and Christopher – to eat their own poo.

She also rammed sticks, hot pokers and knives down their throats and rubbed their faces raw – until they bled – with sandpaper.

The twisted woman locked them up for weeks at a time, made them eat vomit, and attacked them with cricket bats and machetes.

After heroic Victoria eventually managed to escape and raise the alarm, Spry was caged for 14 years – reduced to 12 on appeal – and was released in 2014.

Sadly, earlier this month it was confirmed that Spry’s foster daughter, who was abused by “Britain’s most sadistic mum” for 17 years, was found dead aged 35.

Her foster brother Caleb has now spoken to tell his side of the story for the first time.

Caleb has told how he was bizarrely spared from the most extreme abuse his siblings received between 1986 and 2005.

While he saw beatings – which he was convinced were “normal” – he only found out about the worst abuse years later, via his big brother’s chilling autobiography.

He thinks Spry, a Jehovah’s Witness, spared him because he was young enough for her to believe she could “mould” him.

Aged 13 when Spry was arrested, Caleb revealed she chillingly shouted “mummy loves you” at him as cops carried her from their filthy home.

Manipulative Spry kept Caleb out of school, and as he wasn’t given lessons until he was rescued, aged 13, he still struggles to read and write.

So horrifying was the experience that 15 years on from his escape, he’s still left breathless if he sees someone in the street who looks like evil Spry.

She lied to him, telling him she was his birth mother – and he only found out the truth when he met his genetic parents after he was rescued.

He was taken into care as a baby and given to Spry, who had already taken in two of his genetic siblings, Alloma and Christopher.

Caleb, who lives in Gloucester said: “I never understood why other kids were allowed to go to school and I wasn’t allowed to. But I didn’t question it. I thought it was a perfectly normal thing to do.

“To be honest, a lot of it was kept away from me.

“Most of it would happen if I wasn’t around, like if I was playing outside.

“I can’t really remember any specific really bad things happening in front of me.

“I saw some things like them being slapped or beaten on the feet or bum with bamboo sticks.

“But growing up very sheltered from anything else, I thought that was normal. I thought everyone went through that, hence why I never mentioned it to anyone.”

It wasn’t until his key worker read out his brother, Christopher’s, book on how he was “disciplined” with poles, sticks and knives on their remote Tewkesbury farmhouse that he found out the truth.

Christopher described Spry as a “torturous, twisted person, a psycho.”

Caleb said: “That’s when I found out about them drinking bleach, and sticks going down peoples’ throats.

“I sort of knew that she had done horrible things, but I didn’t have any clue about what extent. I didn’t see it.

“I shut off and I react like it didn’t happen. I could explain it as going numb.”

He recalled of Spry’s dramatic arrest: “I woke up to a massive commotion and three armed police in my bedroom, so I obviously knew then that something was wrong.

“I remember Eunice as she was being carried away saying ‘mummy loves you, mummy loves you’ to me.

“I do get nervous sometimes; not of bumping into her but if there is a loud noise outside, I get really nervous.”

He added: “If I see a woman with the same colour hair, or looks similar, my heart still jumps a beat, in a bad way.

“My mates are like ‘oh my god, you look like you’ve seen a ghost’, and I will say ‘no, I just thought that was Eunice’.”

Caleb was not physically abused like the rest of his siblings.

He said: “I reckon it might have been because I was taken away so young so maybe I was more impressionable, so she thought she could mould my mind into what she wanted.”

Victoria and her siblings were battered and attacked with hot pokers, machetes and cricket bats and had their heads held under water.

Spry of Tewkesbury in Gloucestershire, was convicted of 26 charges of child abuse against children in her foster care in April 2007.

She was sentenced to 14 years’ imprisonment and ordered to pay £80,000 costs.

In sentencing, the judge told Spry that it was the “worst case in his 40 years practising law”.

Caleb said the last time he saw her was after he was rescued from their filthy house – at a contact centre after she had been arrested – but he understandably has no desire to see her again.

“The further away from she stays from me the better,” he said.

While Caleb escaped the physical tortured doled out by his foster mother, he said being kept out of school until he was freed, left its mark.

“I was brought up almost to be underdeveloped, like an adult child,” he said.

“I still don’t know how to make a bed or tie my shoelaces. I can’t spell or read very well, and my maths is completely useless.”

Caleb said he suffers with alcohol dependency issues, for which he is seeking help and working through with professionals.

He added: “I think I would have discovered drinking at some point anyway, but what the family went through must have something to do with it.

“Most people don’t turn into an alcoholic unless something bad has happened to them.”

Caleb said his sister called him to tell him that Victoria had died.

Her death is not being treated as suspicious and an inquest has been opened.

He said Victoria had suffered with mental health and alcohol problems in the past, but had battled through them.

“It must have been through what happened to her, growing up with Eunice,” Caleb added.

He said that while he’s “not an angry person, I find it quite shocking how it seems Eunice can still affect people numerous years later.

“What she did is still affecting people – all of us really – and with Victoria it’s ended in a tragedy.

“For me, it’s affected my mental health, with depression, and left me with difficulties in doing normal things.

“How I feel about Eunice now is I think she’s a very twisted person. She’s a very messed up person; a bit like a serial killer but without the murder.””

Foster son of ‘Britain’s most sadistic mum’ on how she forced kids to eat their own poo and rammed knives down throats
[The Sun 10/28/2020 by Debbie White]