Father jailed for nine months after forcing his daughter to perform 'astonishingly cruel' exercise

A father who forced his daughter to perform ‘astonishingly cruel’ exercise leaving her with carpet burns has been jailed.

He forced the girl – who cannot be named for legal reasons – to carry out the brutal exercise he called ‘the caterpillar’ between 2pm and 9pm.

The exercise involved ‘pushing her whole body up then straight down to the floor’ and was combined with running along a corridor doing sit-ups.

The girl, who was aged under 16, was forced to do the exhausting exercise for repeated 30-minute blocks followed by a 15-minute break. She was only allowed to stop for a bath and dinner.

The father, who had also physically assaulted his wife, enforced the exercise to punish the girl who he accused of ‘bullying’ her sister, Portsmouth Crown Court heard.

The father has 22 previous offences and can also not be named so as to avoid identifying his daughter. 

A father who forced his daughter to perform ‘astonishingly cruel’ exercise leaving her with carpet burns has been jailed. He forced the girl – who cannot be named for legal reasons – to carry out the brutal exercise he called ‘the caterpillar’ between 2pm and 9pm, Portsmouth Crown Court (pictured) heard

Prosecutor Christopher Wing said: ‘As a punishment he made her do some exercises which the crown say were cruel in that she had to stand up facing the wall, then run up and down a corridor doing sit-ups, then an exercise called the caterpillar.

‘It involves pushing her whole body up then straight down to the floor, moving in that fashion.’ 

The court heard the man would force his household to ‘run around’ him.

‘His displeasure would be known by throwing food against the wall if he didn’t like it or meting out other punishments,’ Mr Wing added.

The man admitted child cruelty against the girl – who is aged under 16 – and two charges of assault occasioning actual bodily harm relating to his wife.

His barrister said drug and alcohol consumption had left him with very little memory of the last two decades.

Jailing him for nine months, judge David Melville QC said the man acted in an ‘astonishingly cruel way’.

He said: ‘You caused (the victim) to run up and down, behaving in an extreme way for the best part of a day – one has difficulty understanding how any father could do that to anybody.

‘It’s a sickening story.’

Judge Melville revealed the man’s wife said she is still ‘finding it hard to get on with my life’ after his behaviour.

He added: ‘You seem to think you can act in a way in which you’re the kingpin, everybody rushes around you.’