Karen Danson’s father started to sexually abuse her when she was six. It could have been yesterday, so vivid are the memories.
‘The first time, I was dragged downstairs at 1am,’ says Karen, 45. He would watch porn and make me sit on his lap, but on this night, he pushed me to the floor, pulled off my nightie and made me rotate, saying he wanted to have a good look at me.
‘I wanted to be a ballet dancer back then and I closed my eyes and imagined myself dancing. He didn’t like that. He punched me and spat at me. I picked up my nightie and ran back to bed, and cried myself to sleep. After that it happened a minimum of three times a week for six years.’
It is impossible to convey the horror of that abuse in a family newspaper, but Karen’s account is detailed and devastating and led her to ‘not want to be alive’. She is waiving her legal right to anonymity here to tell her story, ‘because I have finally found my voice’.
She recalls one attack, when she was about ten. Her father had climbed into the top bunk with her. She thinks she had passed out because of the ‘pressure of his hand, which was over my face’.