A wicked stepmother who forced her children to eat dog food has been jailed.

Carol Parker starved the youngsters so they were made to drink water from the toilet and live off cans of animal food.

And for more than 10 years she beat the children with walking sticks at their home in Brighton.

Yesterday the 61-year-old was locked up for two years and three months after she was convicted of child cruelty.

The great-grandmother's family wept openly in the public gallery but she showed no emotion as she was led from the dock at Lewes Crown Court.

Parker, who had no previous convictions, denied the cruelty charges during a five-day trial.

The allegations stretched over 12 years as the boy and two girls were growing up between 1971 and 1983.

The court heard the children, whose mother had died, felt forced to scavenge milk from neighbours doorsteps and steal broadbeans from their gardens when they were hungry.

Simon Parker, now 36, was made to stand naked in a fish pond in the middle of the night after he wet the bed as a four-year-old.

And the children - Simon and sisters Lisa, now 42, and Georgina, now 39 - were also forced to spend hours doing the housework and gardening as well as working an industrial sewing machine to make bags and belts.

Lisa Parker told the jury: "We tried to be as nice and pleasant as possible to try to avoid any punishments.

"We walked on eggshells all the time.

"I remember eating dog food on a couple of occasions. I found it so disgusting. We would get water from the toilet.

"We were hit with belts, golf clubs, canes, walking sticks, fists. I never saw a real reason for the abuse."

Clare Evans, defending, said Parker was taking anti-depressants at the time of the offences and her memory of that time was not clear.

She said: "She has accepted there were times when she did go too far with those children and that is a point of great sadness now."

A jury found Parker, now of Anvil Close, Portslade, guilty of ten counts of cruelty to a child. She was cleared of allegations she made the girls use the abrasive cleaning powder Vim to clean their teeth.

Judge Richard Hayward told Parker she had shown the children no love but just harsh and excessive punishment and unkindness.

He said: "It is quite clear you did not like those children and you made their life a misery.

"I take into account your life now is very different from that in the Seventies and Eighties. But cruelty to children is a very serious offence. It can blight the lives of victims. A childhood ruined by cruelty can never be restored.

"A prison sentence is necessary to punish you and to mark public disapproval of such behaviour."