The mother, now 60, subjected her child to regular physical and sexual abuse between the ages of five and 12 between May 1978 and May 1985.
“You robbed her of her childhood”
And she has only now, 36 years later, been found guilty of her crimes.
In a shocking case at Liverpool Crown Court, it was heard how the mother struck her daughter with a bath brush in the early hours of the morning to enforce cleaning of the house.
The girl was tortured with a hot light bulb, was hit with a cast iron frying pan and even had her fingers bashed with a hammer.
As well as subjecting her daughter to degrading sexual abuse, the mother also held the little girl's head under bathwater so she feared drowning and smothered her with a pillow as a punishment.
The victim revealed that she told the police about her mother's treatment of her when she was a little girl, but that no formal action was taken until she was a 40-year-old adult.
She broke down into tears as a judge told her mother she had “robbed her [daughter] of her childhood”.
“She{the daughter} clearly felt worthless, unwanted and not believed. If it is any comfort she is believed now.”
The 60-year-old, from Everton, Merseyside, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, pleaded guilty to three sexual assault offences and 12 offences of child cruelty.
She was jailed for six years and eight months.