The secret life inside the depraved family who live in the hills of a quiet country town 
 
 ON A rough block of scrub hidden in the hills above a quiet NSW country town, the Colt family had a terrible secret. 
 
 Living in a row of ramshackle tents and sheds which had no showers, toilets or running water were 40 adults and children. But the Colts kept to themselves. 
 
 Neighbours on one of the large properties or hobby farms occasionally heard a chainsaw, but no laughter or play. 
 
 The men occasionally sold firewood and two of the adult men worked as council labourers. 
 
 Occasionally, the womenfolk would come into town in a four-wheel drive. 
 
 Out would pile a dirty troupe of ragtag children, some of them rail thin, wearing dirty clothes. 
 
 The town people didn't even know their names. 
 
 Occasionally, when the welfare officers came visiting, the children would be forced to attend a few days of school, where they needed remedial teaching. 
 
 It wasn't until a squad of police and child protection officers arrived unannounced on the property one day in early June last year, that the shocking truth about the Colts would be revealed. 
 
 DEPRAVED SECRETS IN A COUNTRY TOWN 
 
 Not only were the Colt family closely related by generations of incest. In fear of discovery the appalling facts about their family, the Colts had fled three other Australian states before coming to rest in rural NSW. 
 
 And it was here that four generations of interbreeding exploded into a life of depravity. 
 
 Under the eye of the family matriarch, Betty Colt, who slept in the marital bed with her brother, the children copulated with each other and with adults. 
 
 Years of interrelations had resulted in some of the children misshapen and intellectually impaired. Many of them could not speak intelligibly. 
 
 They were profoundly neglected, to the point they didn't know how to shower or use toilet paper, and were covered in sores and racked with disease. 
 
 Left to their own devices, brothers with sisters, uncles with nieces, fathers with daughters, they engaged in sexual activities. 
 
 The children also mutilated the genitalia of animals. 
 
 When the girls became pregnant, they would often simply miscarry on the farm, not wanting to arouse suspicions among doctors or health professionals. 
 
 While the Colt women claim outsiders had fathered their children - itinerant men, a wheat worker, a Swedish backpacker - science told otherwise. 
 
 When they finally managed to get test swabs into a laboratory, geneticists uncovered a family tree which was a nightmare of "homozygosity", when a child's parents are closely related. 
 
 Eight of the Colt children have parents who were either brother and sister, mother and son or father and daughter. 
 
 A further six have parents who were either aunt and nephew, uncle and niece, half siblings or grandparents and grandchild. 
 
 Interviews with the Colts revealed the family saga began back in New Zealand, in the first half of last century when June Colt was born to parents who were brother and sister. 
 
 June married Tim and in the 1970s the couple emigrated to Australia. 
 
 The family would then move, several times, between South Australia, Western Australia, and Victoria, usually living in remote rural communities, shying away from public knowledge about the truth. 
 
 Tim and June gave birth to four daughters and two sons. 
 
 Three of the daughters - Rhonda, 47, Betty, 46, and Martha, 33, and at least one of the sons, Charlie, form the elder members of the family group in the NSW bush camp. 
 
 Betty had 13 children. 
 
 She contended their father was a man called Phil Walton, now dead, who was known to the family as Tim. 
 
 But genetics show one of her children, Bobby, 15, was fathered either by her father, whose name was Tim, or the brother she was sleeping with. 
 
 Four more of Betty's children were fathered by a close family member. 
 
 Betty's eldest child, Raylene, now aged 30, has a 13-year-old daughter, Kimberly. 
 
 Raylene insists Kimberly's father is a man called Sven, from Sweden or Switzerland. 
 
 Testing identifies Kimberly's father as either her half brother, an uncle or a grandfather. 
 
 Betty's second oldest child, Tammy, now aged 27, has given birth to three daughters, one of whom died from a rare genetic disorder, and all of whom, she eventually admitted, were fathered by her closest brother, Derek, 25. 
 
 Betty's younger sister, Martha Colt, 33, has five children, four of whom were fathered by her own father, Tim, or by her brother, and another who is the product of a union with a close relation. 
 
 It was the 10 youngest of Betty and Martha's children, and Raylene's daughter, Kimberly, 13, who ran wild in a sexual spree about the property. 
 
 Betty's children, Bobby, 15, Billy, 14, Brian, 12, Dwayne, 9, and Carmen, 8, all have parents who are close family members. 
 
 Martha's children, Albert, 15, Jed, 14, Ruth, 9, and Nadia, 7, are also the product of closely-related parents. 
 
 Interviewed by child protection workers and psychologists, they told of a virtual sexual free-for-all. 
 
 Ruth and Nadia said Albert, Jed and Karl showed them pornographic magazines, touched their breasts and Albert had sexual intercourse with them. 
 
 Kimberly said she had oral sex with Dwayne, while Carmen watched. Her mother Raylene had been aware of the incident. 
 
 Albert, Jed, Karl, Bobby and Billy admitted they tortured animals, including puppies and cats. Carmen said her father was her uncle Charlie. 
 
 Ruth said her father was Charlie. She also said her brothers, Jed and Karl, had sex with her. 
 
 Following the discovery of the Colt family in the hills, 12 children have been removed from their parents. 
 
 Their mothers have hired lawyers to argue in the courts for the children's return. 
 
 One of the mothers is due to face court on charges of procuring the removal of a child from care and recruiting a child for a crime, and further charges are expected. 
 
 ### ||||| The case of incest and depravity which came to rest in the hills of a quiet country town 
 
 40 adults and children living in filthy caravans, sheds and tents with no running water. 
 
 A kangaroo was sleeping on one of the children's beds. 
 
 Children did not know how to brush teeth or use toilet paper 
 
 Adult brother and sisters slept in same bed every night 
 
 IT is a case of shocking depravity which came to rest in the hills surrounding a picturesque farming community nestled in a valley southwest of Sydney. 
 
 Unknown to the 2000 citizens of the town in a fertile valley amid the south-western slopes of NSW, a dark family secret was unravelling. 
 
 Now it can be revealed, not only could the case of the Colt family be the nation's most appalling saga of child abuse, it is among one of the worst accounts of incest ever made public. 
 
 The NSW Children's Court has taken the rare step of publishing its judgment of actions taken to remove children from the Colt family (a court-appointed pseudonym to protect identification of minors). 
 
 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 scandal only came to light when authorities were alerted there were children living in the hills who didn't attend school. 
 
 When they turned up on a remote bush block, they uncovered scenes which wouldn't soon be forgotten. 
 
 It was an early winter's day last year when officers from the NSW Police and Community Services turned up on one of the blocks which lie around 30km out of the town between large established farms and the untamed scrub of old bushranger territory. 
 
 They found 40 adults and children living in two filthy caravans, two sheds and tents on an unsewered block with no running water. 
 
 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. 
 
 Exposed electric wires, bags of rubbish and chainsaws lay about. 
 
 There were no toilets, showers or baths. 
 
 The children were unwashed and wore dirty clothes. 
 
 They were shy and made little eye contact. 
 
 Few were capable of intelligible speech; almost all had fungal infections in their feet. 
 
 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. 
 
 The police and welfare officers were taking in the squalor, the deprivation and the fact some of the children seemed developmentally delayed or cognitively impaired. 
 
 What they didn't realise was the children were the result of intimate relations between brothers and sisters, and uncles and nieces and fathers and daughters. Their family threw back to a set of great-great grandparents who were a brother and sister. 
 
 The family compulsion was regenerating itself. 
 
 The children were sexually involved with each other and only one, the youngest, a five-year-old girl, had parents who weren't related. 
 
 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. 
 
 Over coming days and weeks, the enormity of what they had uncovered dawned on them. 
 
 The five family groups comprised of sisters, Rhonda, 47, Martha, 33, and Betty Colt, 46, who slept every night with her brother, Charlie, and two of Betty's daughters who each had children who proved to be from unions of related parents. 
 
 Not only were the children dirty and unschooled, they had multiple health problems and no concept of hygiene. 
 
 Betty's son Bobby Colt, 15, had a walking impairment, severe psoriasis and needed urgent dental work. 
 
 His speech was not understandable. He wet and soiled the bed and his learning ability was at kindergarten level. 
 
 Martha's sons Albert, 15, and Jed, 14, were similarly challenged with their speech, personal hygiene and lack of dentistry. 
 
 Betty's 14-year-old son Billy was underweight and not growing properly, had hearing and sight problems, spoke unintelligibly, had an intellectual disability and could barely read or count. 
 
 Kimberly Colt, 14, Betty's grandaughter Raylene, was underweight and unable to clean her teeth, use toilet paper or comb her hair. 
 
 She had urgent dental problems, hearing, speech and sight issues and was unable to read or write. 
 
 She threatened to cut off a caseworker's fingers. 
 
 Betty's son Brian, 12, did not understand showering. 
 
 He had extensively decayed teeth, and borderline normal hearing. 
 
 His eyes were misaligned and he could not read, write, or recognise numbers. 
 
 Martha's nine-year-old daughter Ruth was neglected and malnourished. 
 
 She was unable to bathe or dry herself. She did not know how to use a toilet or what toilet paper was. 
 
 Her features were dysmorphic. She could not read or write, couldn't hear well and her speech was fragmented and stunted. 
 
 The caseworkers left and returned again two days later, making a further two visits and finally removed 12 children on July 18, 2012. 
 
 Back in town, the locals were unaware of what was unfolding. 
 
 As one of the townspeople told news.com.au, on occasional visits two women with "about ten children" would pile out of a car with interstate plates, buy something in the shops and then leave. 
 
 "They were never clean looking," the man said, "we always used to make jokes that if you came from that area you'd be inbred. 
 
 "But we didn't really know anything about them except those blocks, they might look like a good deal, [40 hectares] for about $20,000 but there's nothing out there, no electricity, no water, just scrub." 
 
 Taken into care, the children underwent sessions with psychologists. 
 
 The tales they told were harrowing. 
 
 Kimberly, 13, reported sexual contact with her uncle, Dwayne, who was nine years old while her aunt, Carmen, 8, watched on. 
 
 Sisters Ruth, 7, and Nadia, 9, had sexual touching with their brothers Albert, 15, Jed, 14, and Karl, 12. 
 
 On one occasion, three brothers aged 14 years and under tied their sister, 8, and niece, 13, naked to a tree. 
 
 The accounts of incestuous underage sex fill pages of court documents. 
 
 Clinicians took buccal, or mouth swabs from the children and geneticists deduced five of the Colt children had parents who were "closely related" and another five had parents who were "related". 
 
 Interviews with the parents and other members of the family revealed an astonishing tale. 
 
 Betty, Martha and Rhonda's maternal grandparents had been brother and sister. 
 
 Betty had 13 children, some of whom were probably fathered by her father, Tim, and her brother, Charlie. 
 
 Martha's children may also have been fathered by Tim. 
 
 Betty's son, Bobby, and Martha's children, Albert, Jed, Ruth and Nadia were the result of closely related parents, as were the three children of Betty's daughter, Tammy, 27, one of whom had died from a rare genetic disease called Zellweger syndrome. 
 
 Victorian Police removed Tammy's remaining two daughters when they found her living in a caravan park and she revealed her younger brother, Derek, 25, had fathered all her children. 
 
 In the fallout from the discovery of the Colt Family, some children have been placed with foster families, others are in treatment programs for sexualised behaviour and psychological trauma, and they have some contact with their parents and siblings. 
 
 They have made progress with schooling and hygiene. 
 
 The mothers have taken varying degrees of responsibility for the neglect, the incest or intra-familial sexual abuse which allegedly took place in the family. 
 
 Betty Colt, who has supervised contact with her children, appears to be in denial, and her lawyer has disputed the court's findings. 
 
 The Children's Court ruled she is not willing "to disentangle herself from her family" and "is incapable of addressing her own traumatic history". 
 
 ### ||||| Filthy, disabled children found at grim Australian incest farm 
 
 (AFP) – Dec 12, 2013 
 
 Sydney — A dozen filthy, neglected children, some with deformities or disabilities due to generations of inbreeding, have been found on a rural Australian settlement in an incest case that has shocked the nation. 
 
 The 12 children, aged between five and 15, were removed by social workers who responded in July 2012 to complaints that they were failing to attend school and when they did show, were thin, dirty and suffering a lack of even basic hygiene. 
 
 When police and child protection workers visited the farm compound where they were living with some 30 adults -- multiple generations of the same family -- they found what legal documents described as "very dirty and hazardous" conditions. 
 
 Over four generations uncles and aunts and brothers and sisters had sex with each other, raising younger generations that also went on to create further inbred offspring together. 
 
 Genetic testing revealed that 11 of the 12 children had parents that were related -- five "closely related" -- and they had a range of disabilities including deafness and blindness. 
 
 They displayed varying degrees of sexualised behaviour towards one another and strangers, and had disturbing stories of sexual acts in the commune involving children. 
 
 All the evidence pointed "inescapably to inter-generational incestuous relationships and intra-familial sexual abuse," a Children's Court judgment in the case, published for the first time this week, revealed. 
 
 The group lived a squalid existence, in two caravans, two sheds and two tents without running water or sewerage. 
 
 "Observations of the children were that they appeared to be dirty, wore dirty clothing and were shy and unable to make eye contact," the court said. 
 
 "Their speech was difficult to understand, and they appeared to have very poor dental health and hygiene. There were no toilets, showers or baths. The children had to go into the bush to go to the toilet. They hand washed in a tub of water." 
 
 A young kangaroo was sleeping in one of the children's beds, while exposed electricity wires, chainsaws and large bags of rubbish littered the property. 
 
 A number of the girls didn't know how to use a toilet or what toilet paper was and had never seen a toothbrush before. 
 
 Some of the children had no formal schooling, others only sporadic, and the court documents said they were either developmentally delayed or cognitively impaired, with seven of the group "unable to speak intelligibly". 
 
 Another of the children had died when she was two months old due to a genetic condition. 
 
 Due to the seriousness of the case the Children's Court took the unusual step this week of publishing its ruling -- originally made in September -- saying "there is no realistic possibility of restoration of any of the children" to their parents. 
 
 They were ordered to remain in state care until they are 18 years old. 
 
 Copyright © 2014 AFP. All rights reserved. More »
– Kimberly Colt is only 13 years old, but she's already had sexual contact with her uncle Dwayne—who is 9—while her aunt Carmen, 8, watched. She can't read or write, because she can barely see or hear, and she doesn't know how to clean her teeth, use toilet paper, or comb her hair. Kimberly is one of 12 children who has been seized in New South Wales, Australia, in one of the most startling cases of incest and depravity ever reported anywhere. The children range from age 5 to 15, the AFP reports, and genetic testing reveals that in 11 cases, their parents are related. They were found with roughly 30 adults, a multi-generational incestuous family—or, as the New Zealand Herald characterizes it, a "family cult"—tracing back to one pair of great-great grandparents, who were brother and sister. Police found the clan last year, after getting reports of children who weren't in school, and the case was so insane that the Children's Court made the rare move this week of publishing its findings, using the false family name "Colt" to keep the children anonymous. The story was first reported by news.com.au in excruciating detail. Here are some of those excruciating details, if you can stomach them: The family lived in tents and temporary sheds, moving around frequently to avoid detection. They had no running water, toilets, or showers. The area was littered with exposed electrical wires, chainsaws, and garbage. The children were filthy, diseased, and covered in sores. Most had fungal infections on their feet. In most cases their speech was unintelligible. They were uneducated, and many could not read or count; one 15-year-old had a kindergarten-level learning ability. They had no concept of hygiene, either personal or dental—one boy's teeth were described as "extensively decayed." The inbreeding left many with deformities and disabilities. One girl was described as having dysmorphic features, another boy had misaligned eyes. Children frequently had sex with each other, and with adults. Other specific examples in the report include two sisters sexually touching their three brothers, and in another instance three brothers tying their 8-year-old sister naked to a tree. When girls became pregnant, they would often miscarry on the farm rather than visit a hospital or doctor who might ask questions. A kangaroo was found sleeping on one child's bed. The children apparently habitually mutilated the genitalia of animals. There's far too much to list. For more of the details, see the original report. You can also see the full family tree here.