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New Zealander Ellen Rachel Craig was sentenced this Wednesday in the Australian city of Sydney to nine years in prison for the murder of his two-year-old daughter in a murder committed in 1987 on a collective farm of the “Ministry of God” sect.

Little Tilly Craig died after her mother beat her with a plastic pipe for not sweeping properly, a common punishment in a cult that covered up the crime for more than three decades until a former member reported it to police.

A court in New South Wales, southern Australia, sentenced Craig, 62, to the maximum penalty for manslaughter, including six years, during which he will not be able to apply for paroleafter the defendant pleaded guilty last June and expressed remorse, public media outlet ABC reported.

Judge Natalie Adams said she believed Craig could be reintegrated but regretted that he had expressed remorse so late.

In a letter sent to the court, the victim’s father, Gerard Stanhope, who won custody of the little girl after her disappearance and who He searched for her for decades.stated that the loss of his daughter is “a wound that never heals”.

According to the investigation, in July 1987, Craig reprimanded and hit her daughter with a plastic pipe for not sweeping properly and, alarmed that she had died, placed the body in the bathtub and waited for cult leader Alexander Wheelon to arrive.

Several cult members placed the body in a drum and cremated it at the cult’s farm near Oberon, New South Wales, after which they kept everyone quiet and the mother said she had given her up for adoption to a South African couple.