Mother initiates fight among her toddler children, enjoys it with her mother, sisters

Mother initiates fight among her toddler children, enjoys it with her mother, sisters
LONDON: A British mother who coerced her two children -- a girl aged three and a boy of two years -- to fight against each other, captured the sequence in a video camera and enjoyed the footage with her mother and two sisters, has been found guilty along with the three by a Plymouth court.

The four -- Zara Olver, 21, who is the mother of the two toddlers, her mother Carole, 48, and sisters Serenza, 29 and Danielle, 19, admitted to charges of child cruelty at the court. The court gave them 12-month sentences, suspended for two years.

According to the prosecution, the four women goaded the two children to hit each other with a magazine and hair brush and when the boy, shown in a nappy in the footage, did not hit back, he was called a "wimp" and a "faggot". The women were seen as laughing as the children hit each other. The entire incident was filed using a camcorder.

The sickening action came to light after the video was found by the children's father, working for the British army and had just returned from Iraq, as he searched for some footage of the children playing to show to his parents. He reported the matter to the social services. The video showed the boy crying after being hit by his sister and one of the women telling him "not to be a wimp or a faggot" and to hit the girl back.

Carole Olver, the mother of the three ladies, is reported to have told the police she found no harm in "toughening up" the children and claimed she had done the same with her daughters.

In the court, Zara Olver pleaded guilty to charges of causing or procuring the children to be ill treated, which was likely to cause unnecessary suffering or injury. Her mother and sisters too pleaded guilty to jointly inciting the ill treatment of the children.

Besides giving the four 12 months of suspended sentence, the judge, Francis Gilbert, ordered them to do 100 hours of unpaid work and banned them from doing any work with children. He told them they were cruel, callous and were quite clearly causing the children to hurt each other for their own pleasure. That is one of the most disturbing aspects of this case, he added.

The children are now with their paternal grand parents.