This is a hard hitting and emotional account from an adult daughter on this journey, a group that are hardly heard from and need a voice.PLEASE READ!
My Story
It’s worth noting here, that although I’ve had past traumas and life has dealt me a shit hand time after time, I’m a happy person. I come from a relatively normal family. Mother and father, 2 sisters and a brother. We all have children. We were a close family who cherished the times we spent together. We live in different parts of the country so these times, were really special to us.
My father is my hero. The first man I ever loved and the only man I ever thought I would fully be able to trust until my dying day. My very first call for the bad times, and the good. He was the first person I told when I was pregnant with my children. He’s my biggest fan and I was his. A kind man, who goes out of his way to help anyone, driving to me in the middle of the night when my newborn daughter wouldn’t stop crying and her dad was away with work. He was the reason I stayed sane during those tough times.
He had an important job in the community. I don’t wish to disclose his actual job but it’s a job of trust and he is well known in the fairly small town he lived.
30th November 2022.
It was a normal day, I was at work and everything was just normal. I have an extremely close relationship with my Mum, and had spoken to her the previous evening. Around 9am, she tried to call. This was a little abnormal as she knew I was working that morning. My grandmother had been sick, so I wondered if she was about to give me some bad news regarding her. I wasn’t able to answer, so I sent her a text “Is everything okay?” She replied with “SOS”. This was our code letting the receiver know to call the sender immediately.
I walked outside the building where I worked, and called her. She was screaming down the phone. I thought my Grandmother had died. I kept telling her to calm down, if Granny had passed away, at least she was at peace now. The screaming continued for another minute or so, before she announced “your dad has been arrested, there are police all over the house with dogs, and they won’t let me in.” The questions start, “What’s he been arrested for? Why are they in the house? Where are you? Are you safe? What can I do?”
The final blow came with “he’s been arrested for possessing Illegal Images of Children”.
WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK. There’s got to be a mistake. My Dad doesn’t do that. He’s not like that. Surely the police are at the wrong door. They’ve got the wrong person. I sat on the pavement, my legs shaking.
My Mum starts crying, screaming even again before my sister takes the phone and begins telling me what she knows. The police had knocked on the door at 0815. My Mum thought someone had been in an accident. Two officers stood at her door, and asked if my Dad was in the house. When she said “yes, he’s upstairs”, they shoved the door open, knocking her out of the way, while 9 officers ran up the stairs. The 2 officers from the door step walk in with another 3 who have search dogs with them. The give my Mum a Warrant signed by a Judge, requested from the Paedophile Unit, and a leaflet for the Lucy Faithful Foundation.
My Dad was told he was being arrested, allowed to get dressed and escorted out to a waiting van. My Mum was allowed to keep her mobile phone after it had been checked, but they took my sisters college laptop, along with 129 other devices. The entire house was search top to bottom. Dirty laundry baskets, the Christmas tree box, my dead siblings memory boxes, the bag with my wedding dress in, they even emptied out the big bag of cat food all over the floor. Every single draw, cupboard and box was turned upside down and searched.
I had to tell my husband, who was a great deal of support in the early days. I remember being insanely grateful after I broke my work absence policy and texted my manager “I cannot work tomorrow. Please don’t ask me why as I cannot tell you, but just know it’s serious” and he accepted this, meaning I didn’t need to call and try and make an excuse.
My entire world crashed down around me. Everything I ever thought was wrong. If I cannot trust my own Dad, how the fuck will I ever trust anyone else? I didn’t understand. There were no warning signs, nothing “weird” about him, he was just my usual normal Dad.
I wanted to die. I wanted to kill myself rather be known as “The Paedo’s Daughter”. I decided I’d do just that if it turned out to be real.. however in the unlikely event that the Police had gone to the wrong door, arrested the wrong person. It happens all the time, right? I didn’t want to die without knowing the answers. My family were broken, shattered into a million pieces.
My Dad was kept overnight. I had a phone call from Social Services, who wanted to know the last time he had contact, supervised or otherwise with my own children. I answered all their invasive questions, thinking this would be the last time they’d want to talk to me.
My Dad was released, and refused to talk to anyone. Nobody knew where he was, if he was safe or if he was considering the options that I was. The police had taken his phone, and given him a different one with a new number. I called over and over again, desperate for the answers to the questions I didn’t want to ask. He ignored every single call, message and voicemail. I wrote out a message, begging to just know he was alive. This was ignored also.
I didn’t sleep for the first 5 days. I tried alcohol, prescription drugs, and came close to illegal drugs just to get some rest. On day 6, my husband called my GP and I was prescribed Zopiclone. I took one tablet and slept for 16 hours continuously but awoke crying again, my heart was pounding and I fell into a panic attack.
My Mum couldn’t deal with the shame, and sold the house as soon as possible. She didn’t feel safe in the house any longer. She left her job, her friends and moved my sick Grandmother with her over 100 miles away without telling a soul what had happened. During the move, I offered to go and collect one of the cars, it was just something I could do to feel useful, to try and help. I expected my sister to collect me, but my Dad arrived to pick me up. I was trying to make awkward small talk and he threatened to crash the car with me in it in to the central reservation. My Dad has never really shouted at me since I was a naughty child, but he was screaming at me, that this was his decision, not mine. I begged him to think of my children if nothing else, they loved him and would be destroyed if he killed us. He stared into my eyes, whilst driving down the motorway at over 100mph and said that he didn’t give a fuck. I genuinely thought he was going to kill us. I arrived at Mum’s house an absolute wreck, shaking, crying and vomited in the garden. I even tried to apologise to him before I left, even though I hadn’t done anything wrong. I asked him if he could show me how to do something in the car, as I didn’t want to crash it, and I laughed, trying to break the tension. This ended up with him shouting at me again, that it didn’t matter if I crashed the car as he’ll be dead soon anyway. I’m not sure how I managed to drive back home that day.
My Dad makes threats to his life on a near weekly basis, and goes missing – again refusing to answer his phone or turning it off. He won’t discuss Christmas or any other event as “he won’t be here to see it.” My sister and I take it in turns each morning to make contact with him, to check he’s survived the night. We make up excuses to talk to him “need to put air in the car tyres”, “I’m not sure how to turn the heating on” kind of things. Anything to force him to answer to ensure he’s alive. I’ve told him that if he kills himself, I will do. He doesn’t believe me, but I truly meant it when I’ve said it. I don’t think I mean it now though.
I’d love to be able to say that almost 12 months on lots has changed. But in all honesty, it hasn’t. We are still awaiting a charge decision from CPS, and I believe they still haven’t finished reviewing the evidence. He absolutely refuses to discuss anything at all to do with anything at all, so I’ll have to attend Court to find out the answers I need to carry on. I’ve asked him not to put my through that, to be honest with me, and that I wouldn’t tell anyone else. He walks away. My Mum has been told that he will be charged in time, but they are still looking into things. They have split up, the end of a 39 year marriage. I’m not sure they’ll ever find anyone else. I still hear from Social Services, who want information that I’ve given them a thousand times before. I feel like they’re trying to trip me up.
The effect it has had on me is difficult to explain. I still have days where I just want to die. I’ve even planned how to do it, and made sure certain people know I don’t want a funeral, I want a party. I just want to make the pain stop, to make sure I never have to be the one to tell my children the truth and I never have to read a Facebook post about my Dad.
I don’t sleep properly, I have panic attacks in the night where I imagine my phone is ringing, and someone will tell me my Dad is dead. I have crippling anxiety and live on caffeine and nicotine. I barely speak to my family now at my own request, and it’s purely self preservation, I just don’t know how to deal with any more bad information which is insanely selfish, as my Mum has no one to talk to other than myself and my sister. But I just don’t know how much more I can deal with. I really do live “on the edge”, and I’m so scared for the future.
I work a lot now, where as I used to treasure my days off. I find that I think too much given the opportunity. I often work 6 days a week, a mixture of days and nights. I have to keep busy to stop myself from going crazy, thinking and over-thinking anything and everything. This wears me down physically, but at least I have a better chance of sleeping if I’m exhausted.
I’ve also discovered I have a very low tolerance for people who think they have “major issues”, when in fact their problem is so simple to solve if they just stopped going on about it. I’m horribly envious of people like this but I’m also aware I’m in a better place than some.
My husband doesn’t understand, and his answer is just to not think about it. This is possibly the worst advice I’ve ever received. I have a couple of great friends, one in particular who has been of tremendous support to me, and I’ll be forever grateful to them. I’ve not told my children anything, they think I’m having a bit of a breakdown, and I’d rather they thought that than the truth. My eldest knows there is more to it, but doesn’t have a clue what is actually going on and knows better than to ask.
Advice I would give to me, a year ago if I knew now what was coming? Be kind to yourself. The entire world has imploded, and it will take a stupidly long time for the dust to settle, to see the sunshine and be happy to see another day, to be excited for the future. I’m not quite there, and I don’t think I’ll ever go back to the normal me. But I try, each day to carry on. I see glimpses of the old me occasionally. A recent night away with a good friend meant I laughed, like really laughed and was able to forget. And this was worth its absolute weight in gold. The very first time in almost a year that I felt “normal”, and I wasn’t scared.
My biggest fear is people finding out, being labelled or referred to as a derogatory term. I honestly don’t know how I would react if this were to happen. I already know that if it comes out in work, I will hand my notice in immediately. People will not understand that I’m classed as a victim, that I’m blameless in this and struggling as it is. I’ve also discovered there is very little help available to the adult children of Sex Offenders. There is little NHS counselling available and private therapies often fixate on Adults who were abused as a child. I’m awaiting a referral but I have been told to expect years to pass by before I’m contacted. But, I’m very fortunate that I have some great support around me. But people don’t talk about it – and I fully understand why. Nobody wants to admit this is happening to them, and we try and go about daily lives with a smile on our faces, whilst were devastated inside.
What I’d like from writing this, is for just one person to know they aren’t alone when going through the same or similar situation. There’s a group of us, in the club nobody wants to be in, just toughing it out because no one else will understand, and this club grows daily. There are so many of us, not knowing where to turn. You are not alone.
Life is absolutely fucking hard, but just keep going. It’s got to get better eventually.
