Mother spared jail over toddlers' fight

A Plymouth mother who forced her two toddlers to attack each other with weapons and filmed the fight has been spared jail.

Zara Care, with her sisters Serenza and Danielle Olver and her mother Carole Olver forced the two toddlers to punch each other in the face.

The four women also goaded the two-year-old boy and three-year-old girl, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, to hit each other with a magazine and a hairbrush and when one did not fight they called him a "wimp" and a "faggot".

The fight was filmed on a home video recorder and was found by chance by the children's father who is in the Army and had returned from a tour of duty in Iraq.

He saw the camera and decided to look for some footage of his children playing to show their grandparents but instead found the fight and reported it to social services.

All four women, from North Prospect, had earlier pleaded guilty to child cruelty and were given 12-month sentences suspended for two years at Plymouth Crown Court.

They also were each ordered to carry out 100 hours of community service and were banned from working with children.

Passing sentence, Judge Francis Gilbert said he found the film "shocking to watch".

"You laughed at them, you mocked them, you swore at them," he said. "You compelled them to hit each other even though they clearly did not want to. You were cruel and callous, clearly causing the children to hurt each other for your own pleasure."

During the fight, both children were at different times reduced to tears and were shouted at to carry on, the court heard. At one stage the boy was cheered for using a magazine as a weapon and repeatedly hitting the girl around the head, and later a hairbrush was thrown in to the room for them to use.

Care, 21, pleaded guilty to causing or procuring the children to be ill-treated in a manner likely to cause unnecessary suffering or injury. Danielle, 19, Serenza, 29, and Carole Olver, 48, pleaded guilty to jointly inciting the ill-treatment of children.