A video shows a rashie-clad 11-year-old boy splashing about in an above-ground pool at the height of his post-Christmas ecstasy.
The sandy-haired child's gleeful screams as he sits inside his inflatable ring do not portray even a glimpse of the hell from which he was released three years before: a shed on a rural property in northern NSW fit only for a dog kennel.
"I felt like an animal," he had scrawled in a letter for a judge to read some years after police found him on that farm near Elands, which also concealed a sophisticated, subterranean cannabis cultivation set-up.
He wasn't the only one subjected to terror while living on that isolated plot on the Mid North Coast. In the face of the nightmare she'd also been living, prison felt like heaven to his mother.
Sarah* remembered the relief that washed over her when the police came down the driveway holding a search warrant on December 18, 2015.
On her day of salvation, she was hanging clothes on the washing line. On others, she would wake up wondering whether or not it would be her last day on earth.
"I would constantly think, 'is today the day? Will we all make it to tomorrow?'" Sarah said as she looked down upon her tormentor from the witness box in the NSW District Court earlier this month.
On December 14, Judge David Frearson sentenced the man, 35, who had abused her and others who lived on that clandestine crop to a maximum term of nine years – with at least 4½ years in prison – on charges that included grievous bodily harm and animal torture.
He had pleaded guilty to five charges on the first day of his trial after separately being jailed for cultivating the commercial crop to which he exposed children, false imprisonment, assault occasioning actual bodily harm, and numerous weapons convictions.
The two women and others jailed for their roles in the illegal operation claimed this man, their enforcer, subjected them to violence.
The names of everyone involved have either been changed or withheld for legal reasons.
Jessica*, the enforcer's former partner with whom he'd fathered a child, and who, along with Sarah, has since been released from prison, said he oversaw the plot like a cult leader, even dictating when everyone could eat and go to the toilet.
"He got into everyone's heads. In a sense, he brainwashed us," she said. "He ruled it like a cult ... everything had to go through him."
Jessica said she had met her eventual captor following a break-up. They became friends and started going to the gym together.
"He seemed to be a really nice guy," she said.
But within about a month of the pair getting together the enforcer beat Jessica in a jealous rage, accusing her of cheating on him.
On September 22, 2014, he used wooden martial arts sticks to strike her all over her body in a frenzied attack that lasted 30 minutes.
"From that moment I was utterly terrified of him," she said.
In a victim impact statement read out in court Jessica detailed the extent of the abuse inflicted upon her, including "being left lying in a pool of my own blood for hours while he continued to come back and beat me further".
"I have had my tooth knocked out whilst pregnant, my jaw broken while my daughter was lying in a suitcase on the ground, and have suffered countless black eyes and bruising," she told the court. "He has beaten me for not performing sexual favours when he wanted them. I have had my daughter's, family's and friends' lives threatened."
According to court documents, the enforcer liked to harm Jessica's kitten "to intimidate and upset her".
"I have had my tooth knocked out whilst pregnant, my jaw broken while my daughter was lying in a suitcase on the ground, and have suffered countless black eyes and bruising," she told the court.
"He has beaten me for not performing sexual favours when he wanted them. I have had my daughter's, family's and friends' lives threatened."
According to court documents, the enforcer liked to harm Jessica's kitten "to intimidate and upset her".
On January 27, 2015, a week after the kitten was bought, the enforcer beat it in front of Jessica.
"These violent acts affected the kitten to such a point that it could not stand or sit up," a set of agreed facts says.
Early in 2015, the enforcer, Jessica, Sarah, two other men, and four children moved onto the farmland to begin the elaborate cannabis-growing operation.
Sarah said in court that her first memory of being abused at the hands of the enforcer was on that property.
"I remember it continuing on and off for months whilst I witnessed you verbally and physically abuse others in the household," she said to the enforcer in court. "Unfortunately, things only got worse with you physically assaulting me."
In late October 2015, the enforcer told Sarah her child didn't clean the bathroom properly. He dragged her into the house and told her to clean the bathroom again.
"She did not move fast enough for the offender's liking," the agreed facts say.
He grabbed her by the throat, pushed her up against a linen closet and threw her into the laundry on top of her son.
On September 24, 2015, the enforcer dragged Jessica into the pair's bedroom, punching her face repeatedly and knocking her to the floor numerous times.
"This assault was witnessed by other people in the house and blackened both the victim's eyes," the facts say.
According to the agreed facts, security footage taken from the property showed the enforcer directing one of the men to hold two hens by their legs while he whipped them to death in early December 2015.
Jessica told the court she had partaken in a crime she otherwise wouldn't have, which, along with her fear of her former partner, would follow her around for the rest of her life.
Sarah said she had no care for the legal consequences she faced if it meant freedom from the man she called her "monster".
"The nurse when I got into jail, she was stunned when I said, 'I'm glad I'm here'," Sarah said. "She said, 'it's probably the worst place you can be'. I said, 'you have no idea where I've come from'."
- *The names of the women have been changed for legal reasons and for the protection of the children.
