SICK REAL LIFE
Kirsty Easthope, 52, from York, is being forced to pay £35,000 – to the man who abused her and her daughter.
Popping on the kettle, I stood in my parents’ kitchen, thinking of all our happy memories there.
If these walls could talk, I thought, smiling.
There was the table where I’d revised for my O levels.
The kitchen that my mum Irma always kept spotless.
Mum and my dad Alan had bought our family bungalow back in 1983, when I was 12.
Now I was 32 with a little girl of my own, *Louise, then four, who was creating memories, too – riding her scooter around the garden and colouring in at the dinner table.
Living down the road, we were always nipping by for a cuppa and biccies.
Especially after Dad died in 1996, aged 71, and I’d worried about Mum rattling around the place all alone.
She’d met someone two years later, in October 1998.
Arthur Peter Hepple, then 59 – who she called Peter – was a regular at the local bowls club.
When he moved into Mum’s bungalow the following year, I was happy for her. I liked Peter.
Louise was still a baby and he doted on her like a grandad, playing peek-a-boo and throwing her into the air as she giggled.
Stunned, I batted his hand away
He even mowed my lawn when I was too busy.
‘My pleasure,’ he smiled. So when Mum added a clause to her will saying Peter could still live there if she passed away before him, I didn’t bat an eye.
As an only child, I’d still inherit the property eventually.
And by then, Mum had started to forget where she’d put things and was repeating questions, too.
Worried it was dementia, I was glad that Peter was there to keep an eye on her.
And I enjoyed reminiscing whenever I stopped by.
Only one afternoon shortly after, I was standing in my own kitchen when Peter crept up behind me.
‘You’re lovely,’ he said, grabbing my bottom.
Stunned, I batted his hand away.
‘Don’t do that!’ I yelped at him.
Peter grinned, and as he walked out of the room I wondered if I’d somehow imagined the whole thing.
But from then on, every time I saw Peter, he’d try and touch me.
Brush up beside me, put his hands on my bottom.
Stare at my chest.
It made me uncomfortable. With Mum’s mind worsening and her dementia diagnosis confirmed, I didn’t want to say anything to her.
I just tried to ignore it.
Until 2011, when Peter plunged his hand down my top as I sat on the sofa, grabbing my breast.
‘Get off!’ I screamed.
Peter laughed.
‘You’re like a daughter to me,’ he said, as though that excused his behaviour. By now, Mum was fully in the grips of demen
