A MAN inflicted years of physical and mental abuse on two terrified young sisters and nearly killed one of them by strangling her in a fit of unprovoked rage.

Mark Frizzell even urinated on the child’s bed as she lay in it, in a depraved bid to frame her for wetting the sheets — then meted out ‘punishment’ by hitting her so hard she cried out in agony.

Frizzell, 45 — who also forced the youngsters to spit in their mother’s tea — seized the girl by her throat and lifted her off the floor as he throttled her to the danger of her life.

The victim told a trial at Greenock Sheriff Court: “I was using my hands to try to get his hand off me and I was kicking my legs to try to get him away.

“I didn’t think he was going to stop.

“I thought he was going to kill me.”

Frizzell, of Port Glasgow, even took his victims to drug dens in the town where they had to watch as he and a cohort of his pals smoked heroin.

His brave victims broke down in tears in court as they gave harrowing evidence from behind screens, recalling the torment he exacted upon them over a period spanning seven years. 

Frizzell also forced them to ‘full-on’ fight each other and told them that if they didn’t engage in punching and hair pulling he would hit them harder than they could ever hit each other.
One girl, now aged 18, said: “He would come in and pee on my bed while I was in it. He would do it round about my private bits so that it would look like I’d done it.

“In the morning he’d ask my mum to come in and they’d both give me into trouble.

“He would slap my bottom — he’d make me pull down my pyjamas and he’d slap me.”

The court heard how Frizzell — who committed the crimes at addresses in Port Glasgow — took the girls with him when he was buying heroin and made them conceal wraps of the drug in their pants and sports bras so that if the police stopped and searched him they would find nothing.

The 18-year-old victim said: “He took us to drug dealers’ houses, or would take us to another house and he’d smoke it with his friends.

“We were sitting with people we didn’t know. It was very uncomfortable. All we could do was sit and watch.

“He’d be slouched over falling asleep, almost falling over.”

Her sister, 19, told the court: “We were made to batter each other — full-on punching and pulling hair.”

Sobbing, she said: “It was scary because I didn’t want to hit my sister. He put me in a position where I had to hit my own family or be hit by him.”

The woman added: “I was made to spit in my mum’s tea and I watched her drink it in the morning. I refused one day and he spat in her tea and gave it to her, then he spat on me.

“Still to this day my mum doesn’t know much. There’s only so much I can talk to her about.

“I put it to the back of my mind so much that I don’t want to recall it, so I pretend that it didn’t happen.”

Frizzell, of the Port’s Moidart Road, chose not to give evidence during the trial.

The jury of eight men and seven women found him guilty of three charges.

An allegation that Frizzell forced one of the girls at the age of six to touch his private parts was found not proven by majority, as was a charge that he’d applied cream or oil to her sister’s bare bottom.

Sheriff Derek Hamilton deferred sentence until February 23 for a background report and remanded Frizzell in custody.

The sheriff told him: “There is no getting away from the fact that you have been found guilty by a jury of very significant offences.

“In those circumstances I have little option but to revoke your bail.”

He told prosecutor Alan Parfery and defence advocate Jennifer Bain that he would like their views as to the possibility of a ‘significant sexual aspect’ to Frizzell’s offending when the case next calls.