TWO Mormon women who subjected six children to years of sustained abuse by beatings, forcing them to eat raw chillis and making one boy hit the others with stinging nettles, have been jailed for 19 months.

Deidre Carrington, 41, and Maria Keable, 60, both from Ramsgate, were convicted at Canterbury Crown Court of six charges of child cruelty and one assault causing actual bodily harm stretching over nine years which came to an end when one boy told school staff he'd been beaten up by the accused.

Judge Timothy Nash said neither woman had expressed any remorse to probation officers that prepared reports on them and said it was 'disgraceful behaviour. "I would like to think you are ashamed of yourselves but you are not because you haven't come to terms with your behaviour towards these six children.

"They will be emotionally scarred for many years to come. You made them give evidence which makes it worse because they had to go through it."

The accused were friends, having met through the church and Macdeonian-born Keable took an increasing role and Carrington went along with her idea of punishment, said the Judge.

The children had to do an hour of chores early each morning before and hour of prayers before breakfast and Judge Nash said he was sure there were occasions the children went to school without breakfast which was wicked.

"You made them eat off the floor which was humiliating and this sort of conduct was reminiscent of Victorian times in this country and in certain religious spheres in the1950s."

He stressed: "This wasn't just misguided punishment but sustained cruelty which bordered on torture. There was a sadistic element. Maria, you were obsessed with punishment and behaved like a 19th century hospital matron bullying children in an unforgivable way."

He made indefinite prevention orders which ban the accused from working with children.

Their sentences are less 34 days already spent in custody.