WARNING: This article contains details about child sexual abuse some readers may find distressing.
A woman who was sexually abused by her dad has described her resentment for her mum for not noticing.
Emily Victoria, 31, from Dorset, will discuss how she was affected by child sexual abuse in the Channel 4 documentary A Paedophile In My Family: Surviving Dad.
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Now a businesswoman and mum-of-one, Emily grew up in a village in Dorset with her parents and two brothers.
Although everything seemed ‘normal’ from the outside, Emily was being abused by her dad since the age of two.
When Emily was eight and while her mum worked long hours, her father quit his job as an estate agent to become a foster parent.
She said: “He was like a really popular person on the surface. Popular with everyone, very good at hiding this stuff.”
The abuse was missed by everyone around her, including her mum. Emily describes feeling like ‘a zombie’ while at school.
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Emily’s dad would keep her at home to abuse her and while he would initially use condoms, she was placed on the pill when she was 15 years old. The abuse continued throughout her teenage years and during this time she had to pretend everything was normal.
“It was prominent, and I had to replace my thoughts with his thoughts as a way to survive,” she said.
“I had to be happy and smiley to him in those horrible moments to make him OK."
As a teen, Emily was not allowed to see her friends or spend time with children her own age because of her dad stopping her from doing so. She also became concerned about whether her dad was abusing other children.
“I didn't consider telling anyone anything until I was about 17. I started to suspect he was hurting other children,” Emily explained.
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“I saw one of the foster children comforting him in the way that I felt I had to.
'[I thought] 'Why the hell have I been doing this? I've been trying to protect everyone else and putting myself in the line of fire.' Then it was a few weeks later I spoke out.”
Emily’s mum Kathy explained how their relationship has been affected. "The conversations we have, we probably both manage them a little bit,” she said.
“And because there is so much emotion on both sides, heartbreak screaming emotion, sometimes it's hard to vocalise or know how to or when to talk through things.”
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Emily explains: “There's so many layers to my relationship with my mum and it really, really hurts in some ways."
Emily was 18 when she reported the abuse to the police in November 2009. Her dad was sentenced to 14 years in prison but was recently released.
A Paedophile in My Family: Surviving Dad airs at 9pm on Channel 4
Featured Image Credit: Channel 4Topics: TV And Film, Crime, Channel 4