Revealed: The story behind the discovery of Australia?s most shocking case of incest.
ON Level 2 of the state?s police headquarters in Parramatta, an unprecedented investigation is nearing its end.
Led by Child Abuse squad boss Peter Yeomans, strike force Hermoyne is inching ever closer to a spate of charges that will leave Australia aghast.
The team has been looking at the disgraceful Colt family since December 2012. Through phone taps and interviews with children they have pieced together a terrible tale.
Mothers describe their children?s voices as ?sexy?. Children are born with misshapen bodies into an environment of neglect and malnourishment bordering on systemic torture.
Girls, 7, are raped by their teenage brothers.
One of the Colts is already behind bars, but is appealing against her conviction. Her, and others in the sick clan, have provided DNA evidence that police hope will lead to charges of incest.
Sexual assault and crimes of serious neglect will also likely appear on the charge sheet.
It can today be revealed that Charlie Colt, a man accused of fathering children with his sister and then raping them, is back in Australia after fleeing to England in an attempt to escape the clutches of Yeomans and his detectives.
The Saturday Telegraph can reveal he recently returned to the waiting arms of investigators after the Child Abuse squad received a tip-off from immigration officials.
Detectives interviewed him as an extraordinary brief of evidence takes shape.
Peter Yeomans, head of the NSW Child Abuse squad at his Parramatta office at Police Headquarters. Picture: Mark Evans
Behind the scenes
As revealed by The Daily Telegraph earlier, Charlie Colt made his mad dash to Europe in June after police applied for a court order to take DNA evidence from him. He claimed he was researching his family history and vehemently denied the allegations against him and his family members.
The latest developments came as Detective Inspector Yeomans granted an unprecedented interview to The Saturday Telegraph midway through the shocking investigation.
It marks the first time Yeomans ? a decorated cop with 34 years of experience in the force ? has talked in detail about the Colts and the secret life of depravity they allegedly led amongst the woods in rural New South Wales.
?I?ve never seen it before. I?ve never seen something like this before in relation to bringing up children in those conditions,? he said.
?I?ve never seen it like this before.?
Officials from the Department of Family and Community Services raided the Colts? haunting compound in July 2012 after accusations of neglect came to their attention.
The remote campsite in southern New South Wales, home to a group of 40 adults and youngsters, some incapable of intelligible speech and with oddly-formed features as the result of being born to parents who were themselves related.
The children were severely malnourished, dirty, illiterate, unable to brush their hair or teeth and used the bush as their toilet, officers alleged.
Grandparents had sex with grandchildren, it was claimed. They allegedly tortured puppies and cats and mutilated their genitals.
?I?ve never come across something, in relation to allegations of incest, that is generational in these sort of circumstances,? Yeomans said.
?When we removed two more of the family members in January in Victoria, the conditions they were living in were just outrageous.
?Squalor is probably the best word to describe it, how they were living, in 2014, Children shouldn?t be living in those conditions.?
In all, authorities removed 12 kids from the farm as the adult Colts scattered across the country in a bid to evade police.
As the children sat down to speak with their new carers, horror stories never before imagined in Australia were told.
Some girls as young as nine claimed their father Charlie, who was also allegedly their uncle, penetrated them and how their brothers repeatedly had sex with them.
Charlie?s sister Martha, accused of also being the mother of four of his children, was slapped with an AVO in September, banning her from seeing her youngest two daughters.
Horrendous
Hers and other Colt kids had malformed features and did not know what toilet paper was when they were rescued. They were routinely encouraged to participate in sexual assault by their parents, it is claimed.
?The conditions the children lived under were horrendous,? said Peter Yeomans (pictured below).
?The human living conditions were just despicable. The quality of life for the children was outrageous, just outrageous. The health, their education or lack thereof was disgraceful.
?The family are saying one thing and authorities are saying another in terms of their education or lack thereof?It was basically non-existent. (The parents) said the children were home schooled but I beg to differ.?
Earlier this month Betty Colt, a leader among the family, was jailed over a plot to kidnap two of her children back from foster carers. She will appeal the decision in the District Court next week.
Police are investigating how the 47-year-old dole recipient is getting her money. Before Betty Colt was jailed, she was driving around in a flashy new four-wheel drive.
Her incarceration was the first of the Colts and a milestone in the investigation for police.
Police tapped the Colts? mobile phones and listened in on conversations that hinted at their evil.
?She says his voice sounds so sexy on the phone,? read a police summary of one of the calls made by Betty to her son Bobby.
?(Betty) says that she likes his voice... ohh you can say it all night.?
Disregard
The Colts talked with a brazen disregard for the law and police. They regularly swapped phones out of fears police were listening.
But despite their stubbornness and obstructive behaviour, detectives are nearing the end of a harrowing case unique in the history of Australia and maybe the world.
?In this sort of circumstance they?ve become not part of society. That?s probably how it happens. It?s unusual in the fact that it?s been generational and that there?s abuse and there?s other alleged offences occurred,? Yeomans claimed.
?We?re looking at a whole lot of alleged offences in relation to this.
?Yes, it makes headlines because it is allegations of incest, we are investigating anything and everything in relation to this matter because there?s such a multitude of children and there?s a number of adults involved, we?re looking at all sides of it.
?I see that in the New Year we will have more of an idea of what matters we?re going forward with. We as police will be in a better position to know exactly who will be prosecuted.?
Rungs of evil
Yeomans was unable to comment on the results of recent DNA tests performed on the Colts.
Asked how the Colt case compared to other investigations by the Child Abuse Squad, Detective Inspector Yeomans said: ?We charged 797 offenders last year. All of our investigations are difficult. All of them are heart wrenching. We?re probably the busiest squad within the state.?
Yeomans, who began his career as a general duties officer in 1980, said when he knocks off every day he leaves his work firmly behind the doors of Police headquarters.