Sisters Danielle and Amanda Brown were abused as young girls by their mother’s partner. They tell MARION SAUVEBOIS how, as adults, they bravely brought him to justice... and how they now want to help other victims speak out

LIKE every little girl Danielle, loved to play princess and prince and her doting stepfather was only too glad to offer himself up as her besotted paramour.

The day everything fell apart 16 years ago, the game had started innocently enough as Mick followed the seven-year-old’s flight of fancy to its happy-ever-after conclusion.

He had been cursed by an evil witch and fallen into a deep sleep, from which he could only be awakened by a princess’s kiss.

When Danielle leaned over him to break the spell, he slipped his tongue in her mouth.

She immediately confided in her mother.

“I knew it wasn’t right,” said the 30-year-old from East Swindon. “They argued downstairs and she came up and said that he was sexually frustrated. I didn’t know what that meant. She said to stop making a fuss about it. He was controlling her.”

This would herald the beginning of seven years of abuse for her and her four-year-old sister Amanda at the hands of their stepfather.

“Our mum met him when I was seven and Amanda was four,” explained the mother-of-three. “At first he was very friendly and he would buy us sweets and play games with us. He would bathe us, dress us. Our fathers were never around and there was no consistent male presence in our lives until Mick. At the time it was magical. We called him dad straight away.

“When he put his tongue in my mouth, it was a big moment for him. He got away with it. It seemed like it went downhill from that moment.”

It is during that time that the girls noticed the bruises on their mother’s body. Soon they were witnessing beatings at home and out in public.

The inappropriate touching began during bath time and when their mother went out shopping.

While Mick was molesting both of them, the sisters would only discover about the other’s plight when Amanda spoke out at the age of 10 after running away.

The sisters took to arguing about who would go shopping with their mother – only one girl was allowed to accompany her, the other was forced to stay at home with her stepfather.

Bedtime was the most dreaded. This was when the abuse reached new intolerable levels.

“He would touch us under the covers and insert his fingers where he wanted to,” recalled the Danielle. “He used to play it down and say ‘Don’t make a fuss’, to make me feel like it was my fault. But I never felt guilty.”

“That was the worst time,” added Amanda, 27. “He used to sit on the side, put his hands under the cover but he would act so normal. He kept telling his stories. He didn’t even flinch.”

Despite the abuse, he was the only father they had ever known and they felt inexplicable loyalty towards him.

“We still saw him as a father figure,” said Danielle. “It’s strange how much we loved him and respected him in between it all. He was beating our mum but he kept saying he was sorry and that he was going to change and we believed he was going to change with us too.”

One day, their mother found Danielle crying in the living room, she tried to tell her the truth, explaining he kept ‘tickling’ her against her will. Her mother taking her at her word, told her not be silly. But ‘tickling’ was the only way she could articulate her ordeal at the time.

Attending sexual education at school and speaking with friends, at the age of ten Amanda started realising something was deeply wrong. She ran away one day taking refuge at a friend’s house. She told her friend and her mother everything.

They took her home and she confronted Mick. A week later her mother had packed suitcases and they made their escape while Mick was in the garden mowing the lawn.

“I remember it being really intense,” said the mother-of-two. “It felt like he was doing it more and more. When my friend and her mum dropped me home, I told my mum everything. It was an outburst. I confronted him: I must have got brave. “

Their mother asked Danielle, then 14, with Mick standing right next to her, if he had touched her. She did not have the courage then to tell her mother she too had been abused.

The girls and their mother moved in with relatives. They never fully addressed what had happened until four years ago when Danielle set up her charity, Youth Life Project in 2011. The group aimed to support children through difficult situations . As part of it in 2012, she launched the #youthstory twitter campaign encouraging users to share childhood anecdotes and memories. It was one of the top trending hashtags at the time, receiving responses from across the world.

This grew beyond anything she imagined and she invited people to write their stories, whether traumatic or happy to be compiled into a book.

“People were starting to share personal stories and it inspired to do the same,” said Danielle. “I started typing and that’s the first time it hit me how bad it was. I thought ‘He got away with it’.”

On the advice of a friend she called the police’s non-emergency line 101 and reported the abuse. A police officer and an employee Crown Prosecution Service interviewed her at home.

Although Amanda was keen to put the past behind her, she agreed to support her sister in bringing their stepfather to justice. Mick was charged with abuse, rape and sexual touching. In August last year he was found guilty on 12 counts and jailed for five and a half years.

“All the way through the trial I said ‘I don’t care if he isn’t found guilty’ and that it was about the truth coming out and stopping him from hurting other people,” said Danielle. “But actually I would have been devastated if he hadn’t. It gave me closure.”

“I felt sick when I testified, I remember when I finished I burst into tears,” added Amanda. “I didn’t want to do it, I wanted to move on but I wanted to support my sister. It has really helped us and it has changed me – I’m much stronger now. It has brought the three of us closer. We have a stronger bond.”

Amanda and Danielle will take part in the 20-mile Walkley Midnight Walk along the Ridgeway on June 13 in aid of Swindon charity Breaking Free.

The organisation is dedicated to providing support and counselling to female adult survivors of sexual abuse, including rape, whether they experienced it as children or adults.

They hope that the fundraiser will encourage other survivors to break the silence and seek help.

“This is us saying he can’t hurt us anymore,” added Danielle. “It symbolises walking away from everything. We are just breaking free from all of it.

"I want people to know, it doesn't matter how long it has been: it's never too late to stand up to your abuser. You may feel there is nothing to support your claim, especially if it happened a long time ago, but that's not the case. It's a gruelling process to go through and it's not easy confronting your demons but the outcome is freeing and liberating and is sometimes the only way to get that closure. This has been so hard for us to speak out about and it feels so uncomfortable, but we want to raise as much awareness as possible and we want to encourage others to speak out.

“We’ve survived something really traumatic and we feel empowered and stronger now. We feel that we can do anything.”

To sponsor Danielle and Amanda make a donation to Breaking Free at www.breakingfreesupport.co.uk. The charity is based at 159 Victoria Road. To get in touch call 01793 514339 or 07547 680839.

To take part in the walk in aid of Breaking Free go to http://www.rotaryclubofswindonthamesdown.org.uk/fundraisingprojects/walkleymidnightwalk.html.

PANEL

- According to the Ministry of Justice’s latest statistics, between 2009 and 2012, 473,000 adults were victims of sexual offences (around 404,000 women and 72,000 men) on average per year.

- These experiences span the full spectrum of sexual offences, ranging from the most serious offences of rape and sexual assault, to other sexual offences like indecent exposure and unwanted touching.

- Around one in twenty women (aged 16 to 59) reported being a victim of a most serious sexual offence since the age of 16. Extending this to include other sexual offences such as sexual threats, unwanted touching or indecent exposure, this increased to one in five females reporting being a victim since the age of 16.

- Around 90 per cent of victims of the most serious sexual offences knew the perpetrator..

- Females who had reported being victims of the most serious sexual offences were asked whether or not they had reported the incident to the police. Only 15 per cent of victims of such offences said that they had done so. Frequently cited reasons for not reporting the crime were that it was ‘embarrassing’, they ‘didn’t think the police could do much to help’, that the incident was ‘too trivial or not worth reporting’, or that they saw it as a ‘private/family matter and not police business.’