A man has told a jury how he suffered daily beatings and humiliations at the hands of his cruel mother.

Andrew Copley told Exeter Crown Court he had endured a nightmare childhood in a filthy and squalid house where there was so little to eat he sometimes ate pet food.

He said his mother Christine covered up her assaults by keeping him off school and taking him to stay with his grandparents on Dartmoor when he had visible bruising on his face and body.

She also gave him cold baths after beating him with a dog lead in an attempt to minimise the bruises and he alleged she twisted his arm and fingers and squeezed his genitals because it would not leave visible marks.

He said his mother resented him because she wanted a girl instead of a boy – the abuse made him want to die.

He did not tell social workers about his treatment because he feared receiving even more serious beatings at the hands of his mother.

He told a jury how his mother liked to see him cry and pretended to abandon his pet dog to make him plead with her.

On occasions she locked him and his brother in a cupboard under the stairs at their home in Exeter.

Christine Copley, aged 65, is on trial accused of subjecting her son to nine years of physical and emotional abuse between the ages of five and 14 in the 1980s and 1990s.

She denies all the allegations. Her case is that she did her best to bring up her family despite extreme poverty and only smacked the boy by way of normal parental discipline.

The prosecution allege she brought up her family in extreme squalor at houses in Hurst Avenue, Farm Hill, and Burnthouse Lane in Exeter and failed to feed Andrew and her three other children properly.

They say that the family doctor and a neighbour noticed injuries despite her attempts to conceal them and the neighbour described Andrew as ‘the saddest little boy I ever saw’.

Andrew told the jury he did not tell social workers about the abuse he suffered because he feared he would receive even worse beatings from his mother.

He said she used to twist his arm behind his back, bend back his fingers, and squeeze his genitals because the attacks did not leave any bruising.

When there were marks on his face or obvious bruising from beatings with a dog lead, she would take him to his grandparents’ home in Chagford.

He said his mother liked him to cry during his punishments and devised ways to make him plead with her, including pretending to abandon his dog and only changing her mind after he started sobbing.

He said: ‘She was violent every day. When I was seven she would pull me over and lay me on my belly. She put one arm around my waist and the other over my mouth and nose. She started suffocating me and then release her hand and let me breathe.

‘I lost count of the times she did that. She would carry on until she got bored and threw me on the floor. I would be crying and she would say I must come over and tell her I loved her.

‘I was not close to my brothers. It was like dog eat dog in that house. We all had to fight for our own survival.

‘I had a Jack Russell called Dylan when I was 10 or 11 and the dog was my protector. If she wanted to beat me she would have to put the dog out the back because he would go for her.

‘If she locked Dylan out and beat me, the dog would yap and scratch to try to get in. 

‘After a while I stopped crying when she beat me. She wanted me to cry and it was my way of getting back. Sometimes she would take Dylan in the car and then throw him out and drive off.

‘She made me cry and beg before she would stop and pick him up again. She also threw me out of the car on the way back from Chagford once and drove off.

‘It was after midnight on a country lane and pitch black. When she stopped and I got back into the car she was laughing.’

Andrew said his mother had wanted a girl and had treated him more harshly than her three other children because he was a ‘daddy’s boy’ and dared to answer her back.

He said the abuse made him wish he was dead and that he gave up hope of being rescued by social workers.

The trial continues.