My rapist is free
ISPENT most of my childhood suffering from crippling anxiety. Diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome at nine years old, I became a virtual prisoner in my own home, afraid to venture outside. After battling with depression I only felt able to re-enter society when I was 17. That’s when I met Simon Tibble, then 30, while canvassing for a political party near my home in Aberdare, Wales. The moment we met in 2010 my fate was sealed.
I had no way of knowing he was a monster who wanted to keep me caged in a prison of darkness. He isolated me from the people I loved, convinced me he was good for me and then, when I realised the true extent of his evil, controlled me with violence and my fear that he would kill my family if I disobeyed his commands.
He exploited my vulnerability and cruelly assumed complete, coercive control over my life. I had to give away my puppy, Star. He kept me captive in his cottage and refused to leave me alone – feeding me, bathing me, even escorting me to the loo. I endured countless tirades of mental and physical abuse, and was kept as his sex slave while he repeatedly threatened to kill me.
Sex makes it sound like it was consensual. It was rape. Repeatedly. Every day. That’s what happens when you live with a psychotic sex maniac.
During my two-year ordeal, after one incident when he attacked me with a knife, police sent me a so-called “Osman” letter, issued when they have intelligence that there is a high risk to someone’s life but they don’t have enough evidence to arrest the potential killer.
A psychiatrist and a mental-health nurse came to the door. They had been sent by the police and they handed me the Osman letter. They said I was in grave danger and warned me to move out of the house. I took the letter and quickly ushered them away.
TIBBLE was playing a computer game and shouted to ask who was at the door. I made up a story about having missing a hospital appointment.
My mum had told the police she thought that I was in danger but instead of the medical professionals visiting her, they came to the cottage. I couldn’t believe it. If he had found out who they were and that such a letter even existed, he would have killed me.
They didn’t understand I was under his complete control.There was no way I could leave him.
When he served a short prison term for assaulting a store security guard he ordered me to write to him every day, making them as explicit as I could.
I hated any sexual act he instigated with every fibre in my body. To write them down would be reliving them and, worse, legitimising my suffering. Yet not doing so wasn’t worth thinking about. If I didn’t write these letters the repercussions when he got out of prison would be brutal.
So, against every instinct I had, I wrote out his sexual fantasies and gave life to his sickest desires.
My ordeal at his hands finally ended when in July 2012 he starved me for three days, refusing to let me move unless it was to be raped.
Believing I was about to die, I prayed that
NAIVE: A teenage Sophie with Tibble and cuddling a puppy she had to give away
someone, something, would save me. My prayers were answered in the most extraordinary way.
I owned a white Furby – a soft toy owl which gurgles cutely and speaks when it’s played with. It was one of my few possessions in that house of horrors and something I’d always wanted when I was younger. I bought it second-hand and didn’t know if it even worked.
But then suddenly one day, it started making a noise which enraged Tibble. He opened the front door to hurl it out and snatching my
chance, I ran out and carried on running – in my bare feet – all the way to my parents’ house.
Tibble was arrested but this wasn’t the end of my life of misery – it was just the beginning of a whole new ordeal.
Police interviewed me in Merthyr Tydfil at the Sexual Assault Referral Centre (SARC) but had to cut the interview short because the centre was closing for the night. It was never completed.
They promised victim support, but only group-counselling sessions were offered. For