The ruling, made by Mrs Justice Eleanor King following a private hearing in the Family Division of the High Court, was made public on Thursday after a number of media organisations took legal action.
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Butler was found guilty of murdering Ellie, who died in October 2013, in June following a trial at the Old Bailey – and was given a minimum 23-year jail term.
Butler had been convicted of shaking Ellie when she was a baby – before being cleared on appeal.
She analysed the case and was asked to make findings to help social workers take decisions about the sibling’s future.
Speaking of the parents” relationship, Mrs Justice King stated: “The picture is one of violence and abuse coupled with a regular excess of drink and or drugs’.
The younger sibling of murdered six-year-old Ellie Butler told of life in “my. bad house”, a judge has said.
Mrs Justice King then analysed issues in 2014 – following Ellie’s death – and was asked to help social services staff make decisions about the future of a younger sibling.
The conviction was later quashed but the London Borough of Sutton and the girl’s grandparents took the case all the way to the High Court in a bid to prevent the six year-old being sent back to live with her father.
She published a ruling in October 2012, after concluding that Ellie should be returned to the care of Butler and Gray.
Mrs Justice King said she had analysed written evidence contained in 24 lever arch files.
Mrs Justice King said Butler and Gray were involved in “petty offending” including shoplifting and benefit fraud, while Butler had been convicted of a number of “minor offences of violence”.
The child was injured when a doctor saw her two days after Ellie’s murder and the wounds were hit with an implement – likely to have been a belt – several times, it has emerged.
Shockingly, when the child had wet itself or defecated in its trousers Butler would put its head down the toilet and flush as punishment.
A High Court judge had refused to allow publication of the ruling over fears it could prejudice a potential retrial if Butler mounted a successful appeal.
In the ruling, she concluded on the balance of probabilities that Butler was “responsible for Ellie’s death”.
They found the High Court judge “made the wrong decision” to keep it secret after making “no assessment of the likelihood of a retrial” and said the risk of prejudice was “so negligible that it should have been given little or no weight”.
Both children were “routinely smacked” and, in heartbreaking notes kept in the sibling’s diary, the child described her home as “a bad house”.
“I said “do you mind me taking photos of Ellie and (the younger sibling)?’ and (Gray) said “Yes carry on” she said ‘I don’t care any more”.
However, King’s judgment handed down after a private high court hearing relating to Ellie’s death describes “a highly dysfunctional and abusive relationship” in which the mother was subjected to “chronic domestic violence”.
In a damning indictment, the judge found Gray had “walked away” from her living child.
Ellie told the grandparents she had once lived with how she loved and missed them after a visit to a McDonald’s the day before she died.
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The kids’ maternal granddad Neal Gray’s statement to police said the children “looked like they had been dragged through a hedge”.
