A 54-year-old woman who subjected a boy of three to an appalling catalogue of abuse, has been given a two-year suspended jail sentence by a judge at Canterbury Crown Court.

The court heard how Marion Moyle had:

* locked the boy in a cupboard she called “the prison”, slamming the door on his fingers

* put his head down a toilet and flushed it

* put cigarette ash down his throat

* made him drink her urine

* tried to make him eat faeces

* stuck a needle into his groin.

Moyle, of Melbourne Avenue, Ramsgate, had also picked him up by his ears so that they bled, smacked him, kicked him in his “privates” and had encouraged his older brother to throw water filled balls at him, the court heard.

She denied the offences claiming that the boy’s injuries were inflicted by his brother while playing kung fu games, that he had fallen from a climbing frame, fallen into a bramble bush and had fallen down some steps.