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.

This has been such a difficult thread to read. My school friend was repeatedly raped and sexually assaulted by an uncle. I encouraged her to tell the school and her Mum. This got her into loads of trouble, then it was all brushed under the carpet. The awful shock of realising the adults actually didn't care. She never spoke of it to me again, just drifted away and went slowly off the rails for a few years.

There are so many upsetting stories like this. Not so long ago, I read Sue Black's book about her work as a forensic anthropologist, which often involves giving evidence in criminal trials. She cites one case of a teenage girl being abused by her father, who would walk into her bedroom late at night to carry out the abuse. She told her mother, who refused to believe her. The girl then set her computer camera to record what was happening, and took the filmed evidence to the police. The footage didn't show the man's face but it did show his hand. Black was able to analyse the vein pattern on the back of his hand and compare it with the dad's, showing there was a strong likelihood it was the same person (though not proving beyond doubt).

When it came to court, the man was found not guilty, and the girl had to return to the family home. It's difficult to understand what was going through the mind of the jury - after all, what other man could have been walking into this girl's bedroom at night to abuse her? It demonstrates how absurdly hard it is to secure a conviction in these cases, even when there is evidence.

Since I read it, I can't stop thinking about this poor girl having to go back to sharing a house with her abusive father and her mum who didn't believe her.

Mammillaria · Today 10:30
It's as if if you live in the same house as a man you're implicitly consenting to be harmed by them - even if you are a child

So true.

^This has been such a difficult thread to read. My school friend was repeatedly raped and sexually assaulted by an uncle. I encouraged her to tell the school and her Mum. This got her into loads of trouble, then it was all brushed under the carpet. The awful shock of realising the adults actually didn't care. She never spoke of it to me again, just drifted away and went slowly off the rails for a few years*.

Oh no, that is so awful, sad and utterly bleak. That poor little girl. I hope that knowing you believed her and cared may have been some comfort to her over the years.

I was so glad she was able to set ED straight after he described when she endured as an "incestuous relationship ". She is an amazing woman.
Her rapist served 18 months of his sentence.

@RoyalCorgi what an absolutely dreadful story. That poor girl had to go back to the house with him? Oh it’s all so depressing.

When I worked in a care home for adults with learning disabilities, we had a young woman come to live there who'd previously lived at home in the care of her father and older brother after she'd aged out of the residential college she'd been at. She was severely mentally impaired, mostly non verbal and had somewhat limited mobility.

When she arrived, a staff member who'd known her at the residential college mentioned that she seemed far more withdrawn than they remembered and that she refused to be near male staff, which she hadn't previously.
About a month after she arrived, we couldn't get her out of bed and she was in obvious distress. It turned out that she was in early labour. The father and brother each blamed the other. I don't know if either were arrested in the end.

Finding this thread has brought back horrific memories of my childhood which I have always had of a father who would encourage my mum to go out with our next door neighbour to the local bingo for a couple of hours when he took the opportunity to abuse me he also took me to the cinema and did the same thing in a secluded part of the seating area.This went on for a few years with the threat that me & my sisters would be sent into care if mum found out,when I started questioning him he stopped the abuse but I am convinced he then started abusing my younger sister & also my younger brother,I told my mother and got the hiding of my life for telling lies.i am now 74yrs old and the memories still haunt me

@abigailsnan I am so very sorry 💐

abusive men are completely free to assault women and girls with no consequences, or next to no, consequences

This ^ we need to realise this is the world we live in. This is our reality. We live in a rape culture. Only 1 in 1000 rapists get convicted.

And we are not permitted to feel safe. There are no places in which women can refuse entry to men. Not at home, not at church, not in women's groups, not rape crisis centres...nowhere.

So why should prison sentences for abhorrent perverts such as this be stringent? When society in general is telling women just how little they matter- why would it demonstrate the opposite by imposing the harshest measures?

abigailsnan · Today 12:15
I am so sorry, that is horrific. 💐🫂

Probably family rape is the easiest of all to get away with.

There may well be far more cases of rape than we think.