Colt family girl, 6, who was sexually abused by her parents couldn’t read or write, had hair so dirty it ‘felt like steel wool’ and had never used a toilet or bath before
A young girl removed from the incestuous Colt clan recounted being sexually abused by her parents, lacked basic literacy skills and had hair so dirty it ‘felt like steel wool’, her foster mother has told a Sydney court.
Known by pseudonym Nadia Colt, the girl was in 2012 removed from the clan, which came to prominence after police uncovered about 40 members of the family living in an uninsulated shed, old caravans and tents on a NSW bush block.
The foster mother – who still looks after the girl and cannot be named – said Nadia that year told her she had a ‘sore bottom’.
A child of the Colt family is pictured in an undated photograph
Nadia, who was only six, told the woman this was because her mother used to ‘play with her front bottom’ and that her father ‘played with her back bottom’.
The foster mother also said when Nadia first came to her in 2012 she couldn’t read or write, had dirt ‘in-ground’ in her hands and feet, had never used a toilet or taken a bath before, and couldn’t turn on taps or squeeze toothpaste out of a tube because she was so weak.
‘Her hair felt like steel wool – it was filthy,’ the woman said.
‘We gave her a bubble bath and she didn’t know what it was.’
The foster mother also said she struggled to communicate with Nadia in the first few days, but that one of the girl’s relatives – who briefly stayed at the home as well – helped to ‘translate’.
Nadia was immediately placed into speech therapy, the court heard, before managing to transition into a primary school after about six months of care at home.
An unidentified Colt family member is arrested during police raids in 2018
Police found dozens of members of the family living on a farm with no tents or showers in remote New South Wales in 2012
The girl’s alleged father, known by pseudonym Charlie Colt, faced Sydney’s Downing Centre District Court via video link on Tuesday on two charges relating to the alleged abuse of Nadia.
Colt, 47, has been charged with sexual intercourse with a person under the age of 10 and indecent assault of a person under 16 between 2010 and 2012.
He pleaded not guilty to both charges on Monday.
The court on Monday heard a 2012 police interview in which the Nadia, now 14, said Colt took a ‘small, skinny stick’ from a gun bag kept inside his tent and sexually assaulted her with it.
‘I screamed really loud because it hurt,’ the then-six-year-old said in the video.
‘He didn’t say anything … just laughed.’
Colt has never previously been convicted of a crime, the court heard.
The trial without a jury continues before Judge Kate Traill.