Every day, we hear of bizarre things people do to children. It's just disheartening the lengths people go to cause discomfort to these little, innocent beings, but what's more satisfying is when their bad deeds catch up to them. They get the deserved punishment, like this couple who fed children soap and have just been found guilty of multiple counts of child abuse.
Keep reading for the details.
The couple, Cheryl Pickles, 35, and Andrew Hadwin, 39 have been found guilty of child abuse involving feeding children soap, starving them, and pushing them into boiling hot showers.
The couple starved the children until they were malnourished and walked over four miles to look through supermarket trash for food at 4 a.m.
The children eventually reported the case to a trusted adult, who alerted authorities and began searching for the evil couple.
Upon hearing news about the police searching for them, they both fled into a panic and even did something outrageous to clean their tracks in the process.
The couple forged a series of letters in children's writing to throw off public suspicion of them.
The letter, written in a childish font, read, "We are sorry, we told lies," in an apparent effort to deny their involvement in the case.
The handwritten notes were confirmed fake by handwriting experts.
Hadwin and Pickles, residents of Fishburn, County Durham, were convicted of an extended campaign of child abuse by a jury who sat at the Teesside Crown Court after a long trial.
During the process, jury members heard about the terrible manners of abuse committed by the couple and a case of dangling a child over the motorway bridge.
Reports about the abuse first came to light in 2018 when one of the victims revealed what happened to an adult, after which the Durham Constabulary launched an investigation.
The inquiry, which went on for four years, saw more than 150 witnesses testify that the couple abused children. Detectives also discovered Hadwin and Pickles abused children by making them eat soap, locking them in cupboards, and forcing them into boiling hot baths.
They would also starve these kids and submerge their heads under the water.
The couple would also order takeout and make the children watch them eat while making them stand for hours in stressful positions.
The evil couple was charged with multiple offenses, including child neglect, sexual activity with a child, and one more count of perverting the course of justice.
Hadwin bagged three counts of rape in relation to non-recent abuse of another child, which happened when she was little. The pair, however, denied all the charges, leading to a seven-week trial at Teesside Crown Court.
The pair have been remanded in custody and will be sentenced on Friday, April 28, at the same court.
