Ordered by an Australian children’s court to use the pseudonym of the Colt family to protect the identification of the children, a band of very closely related family members have been discovered living in the rugged hills of Southeastern Australia, Aussie authorities told News Corp Australia and The Daily Mail (of London, England) on Nov. 11, 2013.
While marriage between second or even third cousins is frowned upon in modern Western society, Australian authorities have made public a tale normally reserved for the scripts of Hollywood horror films.
A disturbing account of a dirt encrusted and deformed clan living generations of sexual relations between brothers and sisters, uncles and aunts with their nieces and nephews, and first cousins with first cousins all residing deep in the isolated regions of Australia where few civilized people tread.
Reportedly inhabiting a filthy family-built shantytown comprised of raggedy cloth tents, slapped together sheds, and two garbage strewn caravans (Australian slang for a trailer), law enforcement and community services authorities from the Australian state of New South Wales (NSW) found more than they bargained for when following up on a vague rumor of a child from the clan not attending a local school.
According to reports, four generations of inbred Colt family members comprised the band living in the campsite that had no running water or anything even remotely resembling sanitary facilities for the disposal of human feces and urine.
Both the adults and children were found to be riddled with an encyclopedia’s-worth of genetic deformities and medical maladies due to generations of close-kin incest.
A short but telling list of physical problems include:
- A boy with a walking impairment and severe psoriasis.
- A girl had fragmented and stunted speech.
- Another boy with hearing and sight problems.
- A baby girl died from a rare genetic disease called Zellweger syndrome.
- A separate boy whose eyes were misaligned.
It was common that all clan members were unfamiliar with how to bathe or dry themselves, and most had no clue how to use a toilet or what toilet paper was.
The psychological trauma and the treatment thereof has barely had the surface scratched.
With the band broken down to five family groups, they were comprised sisters Rhonda, 47; Martha, 33; and Betty Colt, 46, who slept every night with her brother, Charlie.
There remaining two groups were of Betty’s daughters who each had children born out of sexual relations between closely related parents.
A dizzying and nightmarish thumbnail sketch of what life in the Colt family includes:
- 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.
- Betty’s son Bobby, 15, who had severe psoriasis and needed urgent dental work, could not talk in a way that could be understood, he wet and soiled his bed and his learning ability was at kindergarten level.
- Martha’s sons Albert, 15, and Jed, 14, also had speech problems, no personal hygiene and teeth that were in need of urgent dental work.
- Betty’s son Billy, 14, was underweight and not growing properly, as well as having hearing and sight problems, spoke unintelligibly, had an intellectual disability and could barely read or count.
- Fourteen-year-old Kimberly Colt was underweight and could not clean her teeth, use toilet paper or comb her hair. She had problems with hearing, speech, sight, could not read or write. When approached by one of the officers who had called at the ‘camp’ Kimberly threatened to cut off the officer’s fingers.
- Betty’s son Brian, 12, had extensively decayed teeth, had borderline normal hearing and did not understand showering. His eyes were misaligned and he could not read, write or recognize numbers.
- Kimberly told of sexual contact with her uncle, Dwayne, who was 9 years old, while her aunt, Carmen, 8, watched.
- Sisters Ruth, 7, and Nadia, 9, had sexual touching with their brothers Albert, 15; Jed, 14; and Karl, 12.
