R4 interview with woman raped by her father

[RoyalCorgi]

Did anyone hear PM today? Evan Davies interviewed a woman who had been repeatedly raped by her father from the ages of 11 to 21. She gave birth to her father's child. This was in the 1990s. (The interview was ahead of a documentary about children who were the result of rape.)

It was one of the most horrific things I've ever heard. I don't know what age the woman was when she gave birth, but none of the health professionals asked her who the father was or if she'd been raped. Her father actually attended the birth.

Her father was a special police constable and a member of the Salvation Army, and therefore regarded as a pillar in the community. When she first reported the rapes to the police, they refused to believe her and threatened to charge her with wasting police time. They also seem to have told her that if she had committed incest, she was guilty of a crime.

The rest of her family refused to believe her story and said that she had "seduced" her father.

She was eventually able to prove through a DNA test that her father was the father of the baby. He was sent to gaol for - wait for it - three years.

I often feel despairing about the way women are treated, particularly in the criminal justice system, but this made me feel absolutely without hope. When a child can be raped, repeatedly, with impunity, when women are blamed for their own abuse, when even a man guilty of one of the worst crimes imaginable (raping his own daughter for 10 years) gets only three years in prison, then is there any chance things will ever change? This is 2023, not 1823, and yet abusive men are completely free to assault women and girls with no consequences, or next to no, consequences.

I did not hear this but it sounds absolutely horrific. That poor woman. I totally understand your despair at the sentence, it’s very disheartening.

I heard this with a mixture of shock of anger. Her family accused of seducing her father when she was 11 years old. She was let down by everyone.

I heard this one top - horrific story and also a major failure to recognize the trauma of the girl born from the incest (who was the person featured in the interview) who had numerous struggles

3 years for raping yr daughter is horrific, is this vile man still alive?

Relevant?

That poor woman, it’s appalling

Absolutely, it is. He is a misogynistic hypocrit. It is part of a culture where women and girls are not fully human but are just service people for men. Express horror at what this women endured but insist that she should not be safeguarded or granted access to rape counselling services that won’t retraumatise her for the benefit of men. To tell other eleven year olds that they can’t have personal boundaries and are bigots if they don’t want to shower with men. Or call her a birthing person as she has her rapists child.

https://twitter.com/MJHerbert/status/1648231892049711104

I read this thread on twitter this morning. Things don't change :(

After the death of her husband, Richard, Emmeliene Pankhurst took a job as a Registrar of Births and Deaths, acting as such from 8th November 1898 to 25th February 1907. Her daughter Christabel acted as her deputy from 4th November 1903 to 5th September 1906.

The registrations took place at the family home on Nelson Street, Manchester, the public attending at advertised hours. Emmeline says of her job:
"It was touching to observe how glad the women were to have a woman registrar to go to. They used to tell me their stories, dreadful

stories some of them, and all of them pathetic with that patient and uncomplaining pathos of poverty. Even after my experience on the Board of Guardians, I was shocked to be reminded over and over again of the little respect there was in the world for women and children. I have

had little girls of thirteen come to my office to register the births of their babies, illegitimate, of course. In many of these cases I found that the child's own father or some near male relative was responsible for her state. " My Own Story, p. 32.

When I started work as a social worker in the 70s I was very naive. Now I think that many of the babies adopted were the result of rape by male family members, but this wasn’t spoken about and the “fathers” were never named.

There were also items today about this on Woman’s hour and TV early evening news.

I cannot put into words the rage I feel at these examples of male behaviour

Not what this thread is about.

Rude

Also a former SW. More adults with LDs than anyone wants to admit are the result of incest. Lots of generic issues. Families with incest in various 'relationships'.

I worked with a young woman fairly recently whose child may have been the result of her father's abuse. Everyone knew but because she had been encouraged to lie and 'drop it' by other family members, nothing would happen to him. The baby, unsurprisingly, was neglected.

I seem to remember this case?

I met a girl in London in 1979 when I was working in hotels
She had been pimped out by her father to be raped by his friends as well as raped regularly by him. No one helped or questioned anything. She ran away as soon as she got her Nat Ins number do she could get work.

Just horrific.

Back in the eighties I worked with a woman whose grandfather was also her father.She was a lot older than me and one of the sweetest people I've ever met but her mother absolutely hated her.

That is shocking and so disturbing and what that young girl must have gone through mentally and physically and for nobody to believe her at all and then to have gotten pregnant is just awful for her. That all happened here in Ireland also and the babies would have been taken from the young mums in mother and baby laundries where the mum had to work so hard and some never even got out of those awful places and the man went on with his life as if nothing happened. Hope that woman has some peace now and is able to get on somewhat with her life, but how could you ever get over something like that. My heart goes out to her and other girls/women who are going through or have been through this.

@Clementineorsatsuma Not what this thread is about.

Rude

If you can't see any connection between a woman forced to have sex by her father and unable to refuse him, and the ongoing situation of women being forced to centre men's wishes by acceding to male-bodied people in their private spaces, I suggest that perhaps you are not thinking about it hard enough. I've had enough of 'be kind'. Let's try men, including those men with a mystical inner sense of femininity while retaining their male physical attributes, being kind to us women.

I heard the interviews on PM and Women's Hour too. They were different women and both accounts were horrific.

The women were interviewed for a documentary Out of the Shadows which is on the iplayer (link at end of news item below).

Apparently the Victims Bill will allow children in this position to be treated as victims of crime, whichill give them rights to access services such as counselling.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-65274470

I went fo school in the 70s with a boy who’s father was his grandfather 😢😢. He had no SEN unlike the boy in the OP’s story who has been left disabled by the genetic issues.

My mum remembers this horror being playground gossip so presumably he knew or would have known at some point. I don’t know how you process that 😢.

I have worked with a woman with learning disabilities who was raped by her father and gave birth to, and raised, his disabled child. I don't know what, if anything, happened to the perpetrator.

So many terrible stories shared here, truly disturbing and sad stories. It’s just happening far far too often.

the failure of the families to protect and stand by these girls is another layer of horror
when I read this I imagined it might have been about the West children, but obviously not- I often wonder what happened to them- obviously they were given new identities but how on earth did they ever recover

The men who perpetrate these acts should be locked up for the rest of their lives. Their crimes are as evil as murder, perhaps even more so.

Women and girls are just subservient inhuman pieces of nothing to these sick bastards.

Really? It is not about the abuse and exploitation of women and children by men?

Awful. I know someone who was raped by her father. First person she ever had sex with. She didn't even know what sex was properly back then, and it was the early 70s I think, and I don't think she quite realised exactly what he was doing.

Just imagine that being part of your history forever. Just horrific. She was married several times and I believe she kept going for abusive men because of the abuse in her childhood.