I finally told mum the truth

I knew from the very beginning that what my dad was doing to me was wrong. I was just two when it started. My dad Paul would come into my bedroom at night and sexually assault me. Even at that age, I knew he shouldn’t be doing those things to me, but as I got older I never felt like I could tell anyone, least of all my mother Kathy.

I adored my mum. She worked hard as a senior manager, and I have fond memories of us singing songs from Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat in the car and cuddling up together watching a film. Mum was so caring and trusting – although sadly that was a trait that worked to my dad’s advantage, and she had no idea about the things he was doing to me when she wasn’t around.

As the years passed, I’d pray it would be Mum who would come and read me a bedtime story and tuck me in, so I wouldn’t have to face the disgusting touching Dad subjected me to.

Suffering in silence

But everyone seemed to love Dad. He was a larger-than-life character, charismatic, humorous – he knew how to charm – and people assumed, even Mum, that he was nothing but a devoted and loving dad.

By the time I was 15, Dad had become a stay-at-home foster carer, while Mum still worked. Without Mum knowing, he would keep me off school to abuse me. It continued for years, but I never found the courage to tell her what was happening.

By the time I was 15, the abuse had got worse and Dad made me go on the pill. Yet still, I never let on to anyone how much I was suffering mentally from Dad’s abuse. I painted on a constant smile and made sure the rest of the world thought I was OK, but inside it felt like I was dying. The shame and confusion was eating away at me.

I convinced myself that if I told the truth it would destroy the family, and Mum didn’t deserve that – she worked too hard and loved us so much, it would break her. And so the pretence and the lies continued until finally, in October 2008, aged 18, I started to suspect Dad was abusing someone else, and it was like a switch flicked. He needed to be stopped.

I ended up confiding in a friend when I was at her house and she called Mum to collect me, urging me to tell her. When I said the words out loud to my mum, sat in my friend’s bedroom, I saw the look of horror in her eyes and I knew she believed me. As I told her all about the thing