KEONA Wells was excited about starting secondary school and making new friends just days away from her 11th birthday.

But that was when the man who was meant to be looking after her abused his position of trust.

After being touched inappropriately and raped repeatedly, Keona’s dad Neil Wells bullied the youngster into believing this was normal behaviour.

It took frightened Keona seven-and-a-half years to get the courage to report her torture to police.

Last night the 20-year-old from Penhill bravely waived her right to anonymity and told the Swindon Advertiser she felt like a prisoner in her own home.

Keona said she was controlled like a sex slave, was told what to do and ordered about what friends she could and couldn’t see when she lived with her dad in Purton and Penhill.

She said her 45-year-old father, who was sentenced to a minimum of nine-and-a-half years in jail for his sex crimes, had even wanted to have children with her as he loved her like a wife or a girlfriend.

Keona wants to tell her disturbing story as she believes there could be more victims out there that may have been sexually abused by her dad.

“He was meant to protect me – not abuse me,” said Keona.

“The more I pushed him away the more he forced himself on me.

“He said if I screamed or said anything I would regret it. He completely controlled what I did.

“He also said he wanted my first child to be his and said if I didn’t I would never have any.

“I’ve had four pregnancy scares by my dad from 2004 to 2007.”

She added: “I still think there may be other abused girls who still haven’t come forward, but I hope they do.

“I will never forgive him for what he did to me.”

She said her dad, who used to DJ and also fundraise for the British Heart Foundation, regularly stopped her from going to school and prevented her from seeing boyfriends as he wanted her to himself.

Keona started to think something was wrong when she turned 17. She began to understand how normal relationships should work and so she ran away from home.

Now she hopes to rebuild her shattered life, but thinks it will take many years to heal her mental wounds.

  • If you are a concerned adult or a child and would like to speak to someone about abuse, call the NSPCC helpline on 0808 800 5000 or email help@nspcc.org.uk

Daughter's innocence snatched away

A FATHER who sexually preyed on his daughter and eight other girls under the age of consent is facing up to 19 years in jail.

Neil Wells, 45, of Newton Way, Penhill, was found guilty of 41 sexual offences – including 29 counts on his own daughter Keona – after the jury’s verdict at Swindon Crown Court.

The four-week trial heard some of the girls Wells targeted were as young as 11.

Charges he denied but was later convicted of included 10 counts of rape, 22 of indecent assault, three for sexually assaulting a child, three of indecently assaulting a child and three counts of taking indecent images of children. He was found not guilty on three further counts of sexual activity.

His campaign of abuse spanned 12 years from 1995 to 2007, with the majority of his victims from Swindon.

Sentencing Wells, Judge Douglas Field said the offender had used young girls to “satisfy his deprived sexual appetite” and posed a “significant risk to the public.”

“You took away her innocence (Keona’s),” he said. “You used her as a sexual object.

“It was a gross breach of trust.”

Wells befriended young girls, allowing them to smoke, drink alcohol and watch pornographic films at his home to get them interested, the judge said.

Wells, who has been in custody since his arrest at a house in Chippenham in February last year, was put on the Sex Offenders’ Register and banned from ever working with children.

He will be considered for parole after serving a minimum of nine-and-a-half years in prison, but in that time he has to admit some of the charges and show remorse for his actions.

Then he would be heavily supervised after years of specialist police programmes.