A storyline on Home and Away prompted the alleged victim of an alleged sex predator and his wife to approach police.

The woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, told detectives in a videoed interview that ‘something just clicked’ when she watched a character in the Australian soap opera go through something similar to her.

“That’s when I phoned up [the] police and told them,” she added. She likened her experience to a 'living hell'. 

Elsie Wheddon, 71, is accused of 13 counts of cruelty against three children – including the now grown-up woman prompted to come forward by the TV script line – in north Oxfordshire almost five decades ago.

She is alleged to have participated in the physical violence meted out on the two girls and a boy by her then husband Stephen Wheddon, who has since died. Prosecutors say she also knew about – and failed to stop – her husband sexually assaulting the girls.

Opening the Crown’s case this week, prosecutor Matthew Walsh told jurors at Oxford Crown Court that the three children allegedly suffered a catalogue of abuse while living with the Wheddons.

The children were said to have been locked in cupboards, had ‘rat-like creatures’ run over their bodies, threatened with Mr Wheddon’s guns, and were beaten with a belt or punched.

Elsie Wheddon allegedly used one of the girl’s head ‘as a mop’ after the youngster urinated on the floor in a childhood indiscretion.

On another occasion, when both Elsie and Stephen were present, the same girl was ‘thrown in the bath in her nightie and dressing gown, pushed under so she could not breathe’, Mr Walsh told the jury.

The boy was allegedly burnt with a cigarette lighter, leaving him with a mark on his back, then locked in the loft after he failed to heed an instruction not to cry, it was said.

Speaking in a video recorded interview, played to the jury earlier this week, one of the women told detectives: “It was like we was their personal punchbags. That’s what it feels like. I was their punchbag.”

The second woman described being repeatedly molested by Stephen, telling a detective of hearing ‘the lock go’ on her bedroom door and the man entering the room.

She claimed he had twice ‘had sex’ with her. He was said to have called for his wife after injuring the girl and she bathed the child. The woman said Mrs Wheddon told her husband after the second time: “You can’t do that no more.”

The prosecutor said that Mrs Wheddon, when interviewed by the police, said she thought she had treated the children well and denied the specific cruelty allegations. She had not seen her ex-husband for ‘many years’.

Both female complainants suggested that Elsie was a ‘different person’ when around her husband.

Wheddon, of Northend, Warwickshire, denies 13 counts of cruelty to a child under-16 years. The offences all date back to the 1970s.

The trial continues.