A home video of two toddlers being goaded into punching each other left a judge shocked yesterday.

The youngsters’ grandmother, mother and two aunts were warned that they faced jail after the film of them forcing the brother and sister to fight was shown to magistrates.

The women, who include the children’s 21-year-old mother, made the seven-minute video in the front room of their home in Plymouth.

The two-year-old boy, dressed in a nappy and T-shirt, is goaded into attacking his three-year-old sister with his fists and a hairbrush while the women call him a “wimp” and a “bloody faggot”.

After the video was shown to magistrates in Plymouth, District Judge Paul Farmer told the women that they all faced jail terms and that the mother may lose custody of the two children.

Police were called in after the children’s father, who is estranged from their mother, borrowed the camera to show his parents a holiday video. Instead, they were confronted with the images of the crying children being forced to kick and punch each other.

The 49-year-old grandmother and two aunts, aged 19 and 29, pleaded guilty to two charges of inciting the ill-treatment of children at an earlier hearing. The mother has admitted two charges of causing or procuring the children to be assaulted, illtreated, neglected, abandoned, or exposed in a manner likely to cause unnecessary suffering or injury to health.

All four women will be sentenced at Plymouth Crown Court on April 20. They cannot be named to avoid identifying the children.

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