The vast majority of defendants to stand before judges in Plymouth are men - usually responsible for the most heinous crimes.
But women have committed some of the most shocking offences, including murder, child cruelty and running a gang of slaves.
Paedophile such as Vanessa George and Sarah Gotham have hit the national and international headlines.
Each has been jailed for years.
Cruel mum repeatedly smothered who two infant sons
A cruel mum repeatedly smothered her two infant sons – rendering them unconscious and putting their lives at risk.
Jessica Jones, then aged 22, suffocated the boys 10 times before dialing 999 and claiming they had suffered fits.
A judge who jailed her for six years told Truro Crown Court in 2015 that either child could have died during the attacks.
Paramedics found the children lifeless and turning blue during some of the incidents.
Prosecutors said Plymouth woman Jones received a “perverse satisfaction” by watching her sons after she had smothered them.
The boys always made a quick recovery and doctors could find no reason for their illnesses.
Jones even allowed her second son to be fitted with a heart monitor to his chest wall under general anaesthetic as doctors struggled to find a cause for his fits.
She was finally caught when secretly filmed smothering the boy at Derriford Hospital by a hidden camera.
Jones pleaded guilty to two counts of child cruelty when each of the boys was under a year old.
She even recorded her youngest son recovering from suffocation on her mobile phone.
Judge Simon Carr said both boys appeared to be doing well but may develop health problems as they grew up. He added: “We have not got a full insight into what you did and the reasons for it.”
Jones’ defence barrister said that she bore the symptoms of Induced Illness Syndrome. He said she also suffered from depression and an ‘unstable personality disorder’.
A twisted woman stabbed and beat to death man and carved word on his chest
A twisted man and woman stabbed and beat to death their drinking partner in a grisly revenge attack five years ago – which had chilling echoes of a hit film.
Alcoholics Jacqueline Cooke and her ex-lover Ian Gollop savagely assaulted friend Keith Dance, leaving him with some 70 wounds.
Cooke, then aged 30, had accused Mr Dance of raping her, which he denied in police interview.
Mr Dance, aged 33, was left with a number of regular scratches across his stomach, which officers could not decipher but could have spelt out a word.
Cooke herself told her trial that the word was “Whatever”.
She added it was the word Mr Dance had repeatedly used to brush off her allegations of rape.
The branding echoes a chilling incident in the popular book and film The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.
Rape victim Lisbeth Salander tattoos her abuser, the social worker Bjurman, in Stieg Larsson’s Swedish-set best-seller.
Sadistic Gollop, then aged 51, strangled Mr Dance with cable, and kicked and stamped on his head in his Stoke bedsit in March 2013.
Cooke admitted stabbing him in the forehead and the back of the head with a knife in Molesworth Road, though the exact sequence of events is not known.
The pair lay in wait for Mr Dance at his tiny flat on March 10, Plymouth Crown Court heard at Cooke’s murder trial early the following year.
The stab wounds would not have been fatal on their own and Cooke blamed the attack on Gollop – who had already admitted murder.
Cooke, who gave evidence for two days, claimed that Mr Dance was conscious and even lifted his T-shirt up while she wielded the knife.
Vile mum waged nine-year campaign of cruelty against her son
A vile mother was jailed for a nine-year campaign of abuse towards her son – including beating, spitting and even forcing him to clean up her used sanitary products.
Amanda Bish, aged 40, drove the teenager to self-harm by assaulting and neglecting him, a court heard last year.
The boy, then aged 14, told police he was beaten, had little food to eat and was even forced to clean up his mum’s used sanitary products in their filthy city home.
She then tried to bully her son into blaming her husband after police started investigating, Plymouth Crown Court heard.
Jailing her for a total of 40 months, Judge Paul Darlow told Plymouth Crown Court: “The seriousness of these offences against a child, let alone your own child, cannot be overstated.
“The ill-treatment is aimed at a particularly vulnerable person and is an abuse of trust which is bound to have serious physical and psychological effects on the child and involve their degradation as they grow up.
"It happens, by and large, in the one place that a child is entitled to feel safe, and that is in the home.”
Bish, of Talbot Gardens, Barne Barton, had pleaded guilty to child cruelty between August 2007 and July 2016.
She further admitted assaulting the boy by beating and perverting the course of justice.
The boy, who has since changed his name and moved to another area, told police there was often little food for him while his mother had “plenty”. He frequently only had one meal a day.
He complained of not having enough clothes – telling of how his toes poked out of his shoes and said his clothes were ripped.
He told of how his mother would openly describe him using coarse language and shouting that amounted to verbal abuse.
The conditions of the house were described as “squalid” with cat faeces littering the house.
The court heard how the boy was made to clean up his mum’s used sanitary products. He suffered assaults by objects being thrown at him and was spat at. He was hit with a vacuum cleaner pipe and with a metal pole.
Callous slave gang leader treated men as cash cows
A callous woman headed a gang which tricked vulnerable men into leaving her homeland of the Czech Republic for Plymouth - where they were held in slavery.
Ruzena Tancosova, aged 37, and members of her extended Roma family trafficked the men with promises of a better life.
But they were housed in garages and under the stairs and threatened with violence if they tried to flee.
Tancosova and her family fed them meagre meals while forcing them to do menial housework or taking their wages from factory and other jobs.
Two of the men eventually fled from a family home and police were called.
Five members of the gang were eventually jailed for a total of more than 20 years after two long and complex trials at Plymouth Crown Court.
A judge told the gang they had exploited their victims as "cash cows".
He jailed Ruzena Tancosova for six and a half years, recommending that she is deported together with her compatriots.
Pregnant Tancosova sobbed in the dock as as they were jailed in November 2016. All five were found guilty after an eight-week trial of trafficking men into Plymouth where they were housed in poor conditions including sleeping in a garage and even a cupboard.
Police said they freed eight men from the family’s rented city homes in September 2014.
But Tancosova and three other Czech women later went on to admit conspiracy to pervert the course of justice - after sabotaging the first trial.
They pressured a key prosecution witness to withdraw his evidence.
Tancosova, jailed alongside her mother, was handed another five-year term, to be served at the end of her first sentence - making a total of eleven and a half years.
Trial Judge Ian Lawrie reserved some of his most scathing comments for Tancosova and her brother Petr Tancos, whom he called the “primary drive r s ” in the crimes.
He said: “Both of you have been convicted of offences which are premised on the persistent and ruthless exploitation of your fellow human beings."
Plymouth nursery worker Vanessa George sexually assaulted children and took indecent photos
Plymouth nursery worker Vanessa George sexually assaulted children and took indecent photos of them for her online lover.
She is perhaps the most evil woman of them all.
The mother of two, who described herself to her internet lover Colin Blanchard as a “paedo whore mum”, was sentenced to seven years in prison following an emotionally-charged court hearing in Bristol in December 2009.
George worked at Little Teds nursery in Efford, Plymouth, until her arrest on June 9, 2009 on suspicion of sexually assaulting a number of pre-school children in her care.
She was also suspected of taking indecent photographs of them and sending them to her online lover, Colin Blanchard in Greater Manchester.
In all she admitted to a total of seven sexual assaults of young children and six counts of distributing and making indecent pictures of children.
She has been eligible for parole for nearly two years, but has yet to be released.
During her sentencing Judge Mr Justice Royce said he wanted the parents and the media to recognise that while he was passing the indeterminate sentence of imprisonment for public protection of seven years, "it is, in effect, a life sentence".
Vanessa George
He said the case had caused "widespread revulsion and incredulity" and had "rocked the city of Plymouth" with the shockwaves extending to every nursery school in the country.
Mr Justice Royce explained the devastation George had wrought upon the families of children who attended the Laira nursery, their torment, sleepless nights and nightmares, their tearfulness and distress.
He noted how some children had begun to display “worrying signs which may be symptomatic of sexual abuse” and highlighted both the suffering of her own family and of her co-workers.
Twisted woman abused drugged girl for watching online paedophile
A vile woman was jailed for sexually abusing a drugged girl while streaming her actions live to a watching paedophile in the United States.
Twisted Sarah Gotham, aged 34, touched the youngster in front of a webcam, sending images to a woman in California over Skype.
Co-defendant Craig Forbes, aged 36, had already admitted abusing the girl more than four years ago.
In October last year at Plymouth Crown Court, Gotham was jailed for nine years and Forbes for eight years.
They were convicted after self-confessed paedophile Kori Ellis was arrested in San Francisco and admitted encouraging the man and woman to abuse the child for her pleasure.
Police are not certain who the child is – but believe she must have been drugged and appeared unaware of the vile acts.
![Sarah Gotham, 34, from Plymouth, and Craig Forbes, 36, of Warberry Road West, Torquay, were sentenced before Plymouth Crown Court today [26th October] after being found guilty of multiple sexual assaults against a girl under the age of 13.
Gotham, who has been on trial for the past eight weeks had denied six offences; Forbes had earlier pled guilty to four offences.
Forbes was also convicted on a separate offence of making indecent images of children and breaching his Sexual Harm Prevention Order, imposed in 2015, after a laptop was found hidden in a sofa at his home upon his arrest in 2016. Gotham was jailed for nine years and Forbes for eight years.](https://i2-prod.plymouthherald.co.uk/news/plymouth-news/article687082.ece/ALTERNATES/s615/Gotham.jpg)
Gotham, from Plymouth, went on trial after denying six counts of sexually assaulting a child under the age of 13 between December 2012 and March 2013.
She claimed at Plymouth Crown Court that she never knew Ellis and did not know the child involved.
But a jury took just three hours and 20 minutes to convict Gotham by a unanimous verdict on all counts at the end of a seven-week trial held amid unprecedented security.
Forbes, aged 36, a former company director, admitted three counts of sexual assault back in February last year.
Ellis, aged 42, a waitress in a San Francisco strip bar, firmly identified Gotham and Forbes during a wide-ranging investigation which saw police criss-crossing the Atlantic.
And police recovered pictures of sales advisor Gotham on her computer, which she had Googled to identify the woman she saw over the webcam.
The American, who has also worked as dominatrix and a magician’s assistant, also picked Gotham out of a video identification parade.
Ellis met Forbes and Gotham on a “chat roulette” site called Omegle and they swapped details so they could speak privately over Skype.
Ellis, giving evidence over a videolink from San Francisco, chillingly said that she enjoyed watching the abuse in what she called “shows” on five separate occasions.
Gotham & Forbes: The full story
Sick female care worker abused frail elderly residents in home
A sick female care worker sexually assaulted two women at a Devon residential home.
Christina Sethi, then aged 25, was handed a 10-year jail sentence at Plymouth Crown Court after the full extent of her sick sexual abuse of elderly victims under her care was revealed.
Sethi, from Torquay, admitted five offences of sexual assault between January and May 2015 relating to a vulnerable man and two women, one of which was dying. He passed away before the case came to court.
The court heard how Sethi was visibly seen to enjoy abusing the patients who were classified as “highly vulnerable”, with one of them aged 101. Sethi even filmed and shared the recordings with her then-boyfriend.
The elderly victims did not have the ability to fully understand or tell anyone about what occurred.
Recorder Richard Stead sentenced Sethi to 10 years in prison, but with five of those to be spent on licence.
He told Sethi, who appeared in court via video link, that she “humiliated” people who placed their trust in her and “exemplified the worst fears” of families who put relatives into care.
The court was told that Sethi was a night carer at a care home in Devon, which cannot be named to protect the victims’ identities. Her first victim suffered with Alzheimer’s and had terminal cancer.
She was receiving end-of-life care at the home when Sethi sexually assaulted her using a sex aid.
The Court of Appeal later increased his sentence until 15 years.
Sethi was only found out when a man, who knew the defendant, handed in a laptop computer to police containing the videos of abuse in the recycling basket.
Sethi originally told investigating officers, before a third victim was discovered, that there were no more than two victims and said her boyfriend had “convinced her to do it”. Police dismissed the claim.
Mum shook and beat baby leaving him fighting for his life
A cruel mum who shook and beat her baby to leave him fighting for his life.
Student Elizabeth Wilkins, aged 23, lashed out at her tiny defenceless new-born son in rage and frustration, a jury decided in September.
A judge at Plymouth Crown Court ruled that she would go to prison – but adjourned sentence until December 6 for probation and psychiatric reports.
Escort Wilkins was released on bail, though she is banned from contacting her son.
Wilkins shook him and fractured his ribs on several occasions before banging his head and fracturing his skull.
The child, just three months old, suffered brain damage two years ago and may have developmental problems as he grows up.
Callous Wilkins, who had been studying law at the University of Plymouth, tried to shift the blame on her former partner and co-defendant, 30-year-old Erick Vanselow.
He was cleared of failing to protect their son – having earlier been acquitted of assaults.
Willkins, suspended from her studies, denied assaulting her child causing grievous bodily harm with intent on September 22, 2016.
That was the day the boy’s head was smashed against a hard surface in the flat the parents once shared in College Avenue in Mutley.
She also pleaded not guilty to assault causing actual bodily harm between August 31 and September 3 in 2016.
A jury unanimously found her guilty on both counts after seven hours of deliberations at the end of a three-week trial.
The panel was not invited to deliver verdicts on alternative counts.
The jury acquitted Mr Vanselow of a single count of failing to protect his son from his birth in July, 2016 until he suffered terrible head injuries on September 22.
Mr Vanselow, who was studying for a masters in international relations, was too emotional to talk after the hearing.
Wilkins, originally from Weston Super-Mare, stood with head bowed and eyes closed as the foreman read the verdicts.
Judge Peter Johnson told her: “Just because I am granting you bail it should not be taken by you as any indication of sentence. This is a very serious case and the inevitable sentence will be a prison sentence measured in years.”
The exact events which ended in the boy, who cannot be named by court order, in hospital will never be known.
The jury found that Wilkins attacked her son several times, fracturing his ribs and then pointing the finger of suspicion at Mr Vanselow.
She finally banged his head against a heavy object while she was alone in the flat for 90 minutes on September 22.
Wilkins said nothing of what happened and the parents only took him to the GP – who immediately phoned for an ambulance.
Staff at Derriford Hospital reported that Wilkins was strangely unemotional as she learnt of his serious injuries.
Latest cases heard by Plymouth Crown Court
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