Gertrude Baniszewski: Difference between revisions

Baniszewski began to physically abuse Sylvia in 1965. She appointed her own children into bullying her and they would do horrible things to her like pushing her down the stairs, burning cigarettes onto her skin multiple times and forcing her to consume her excrement and vomit. Her daughter Paula, one of the torturers, once tried to repent of her hatred towards Sylvia to a pastor but Gertude prevented her from doing so by stating that Sylvia was the one being hateful. Gertrude also accused Sylvia of being a prostitute, and "preached" to her about how it was wrong to sell your body for money, and that women were filthy in general. Hypocritically, Gertrude decided to please her fellow torturers, most of them male neighborhood children, by forcing Sylvia to participate in a strip tease, where she was stripped naked and had her vagina forcibly violated by an empty glass Coca Cola bottle. The most infamous and horrific act throughout the months of torture was when Baniszewski, with the help of her child torturers, carved the words "I'M A PROSTITUTE AND PROUD OF IT" onto her stomach with a heated needle. The letter "S" (ended up looking like a "3") was also burnt above the words with a hot iron poker.