A father who raped and tortured his daughter for more than a decade - tying her up and locking her in an old chook pen for nights on end - will most likely die in jail.
Describing his offending as a "depravity of an almost unimaginable magnitude", Judge Sarah Huggett sentenced the man, 59, to a maximum of 48 years in jail.
His wife, who also sexually abused their daughter and gave her advice on how to arouse and satisfy her father, was jailed for a maximum of 16 years.
Now 24, the daughter suffered sickening psychological, physical and sexual abuse at the hands of her parents from the age of five until she was 19.
In sentencing the parents in the Sydney Downing Centre District Court on Friday, Judge Huggett said she recognised that no sentence she imposed could reflect the harm done to the daughter.
Judge Huggett said the father had used his daughter to satisfy his own depraved and sadistic desires and the mother had shown "complete disregard" for her worth.
The earliest the father will be eligible for parole is 2049, while the mother will be eligible for release in 2027.
The daughter was not in the court room, but watched the two-day sentencing of her parents via audio visual link.
In a victim impact statement, she described her childhood as a "living hell" and said her parents' "putrid acts of torture" would haunt her forever.
A psychiatrist described the abuse she was subject to as being "catastrophically devastating to her entire person".
Judge Huggett said both parents had maintained their innocence and had not shown a "modicum of remorse or insight" into their conduct.
The parents were both competitive sportspeople and they coached their daughter, who was a promising athlete who had achieved success nationally and internationally.
Fairfax Media revealed the details of the case earlier this year including how the father, now 59, repeatedly raped his daughter in an old chicken shed on the family's rural property, tying her up and surrounding her with barbed wire so she could not escape.
He would lock her in the shed and in a tiny box used for sports gear for nights at a time.
The daughter was forced to eat her own vomit, stand on ants' nests and swallow hot chillies and was threatened with the "shed" if she did not perform well in sports events.
The father used scissors, spanners, nails and other tools to abuse her and told her: "All I've ever tried to do is be a good father."
He threatened to kill her if she revealed the abuse to anyone, and said "I can do what I want to you, I own you."
The father first raped his daughter in her bedroom when his wife was in hospital having just given birth. At the time she was in kindergarten.
Judge Huggett said that, from an early age, the daughter had been made to think that what she was suffering at the hands of her father was normal.
"He deliberately conditioned his daughter, using physical, emotional and psychological means to the point she would have come to expect he would abuse her as and when he wished," Judge Huggett said.
"[He] completely disregarded and exploited his youngest daughter's vulnerability and powerlessness for his own motives."
The mother, now 51, went on to give her advice on how to sexually please her father, including telling her: "It makes it better if you make noises, it would make it better for you and Dad."
The mother would also sexually abuse her, and on one occasion both parents forced her to perform sexual acts on each other.
Judge Huggett said the mother had "breached the trust her daughter held in her in the most serious ways".
"She intended that her conduct would signal to the primary victim that the father's deviant conduct was normal and that it would be beneficial for the victim to participate in it," Judge Huggett said.
"She did nothing to stop that abuse."
Judge Huggett said she was satisfied the mother had been drawn into the offending by the father, and the court heard that she now planned to divorce him.
In 2011, after spending time in a mental health clinic and being subject to further assaults by her father, the daughter made a statement to police.
When they searched the family's property, they found pairs of bloodied underpants and tools she had buried around the property.
The daughter had also scratched "trapped", "dad" and "mum is coming" into the wood frame of the shed.
A jury found the father guilty of 73 offences and the mother guilty of 13 offences, after a 12-week trial earlier this year.
At a sentencing hearing in September, the daughter said her life had been destroyed by their "evil" but she had gone back to TAFE, finished year 12 and was now putting herself through a degree at university.
"My father inflicted evil," she told the court.
"He abused me in such ways that I thought I was going to die. My mother didn't stop him and did not protect me. My childhood was lost and I can never get it back.
"My focus, my goal, throughout my childhood was to survive and to satisfy [my father's] needs so that he wasn't angry.
"If that meant [competing at sport] or pleasing him in sexual ways, that is what it meant.
"Now, on this day and every day for the rest of my life, I have to find some way to move on from his abuse."
