Groomed at 11, then a terrifying attack at 18

JOANNE – not her real name – met Clement Freud in 1971 when he came to her family home bearing gifts.

From the age of 11 onwards he would phone her and tell her she was a ‘special child with a rare, high intelligence’.

In 1973 Sir Clement became a Liberal MP, after which he went on to invite Joanne to the Houses of Parliament and to his home.

He also began grooming her. She recalled: ‘I can remember him kissing me on the mouth and soft hugging.

‘I felt sick but grateful at the same time, frightened and unable to move or react in any way.’

Sir Clement invited Joanne and a female friend of hers to his home for dinner in 1974, when she was just 14.

Joanne said: ‘ During a tour of the house he tried to lock us into his basement bedroom.

‘I cannot entirely remember what he said, but it was something along the lines of, “Would you like to get naked and have some fun?” ’ But the worst was yet to come. Sir Clement offered to cook for Joanne again in June 1978, when she was 18, and invited himself over to her parents’ home.

Describing the nightmarish evening, she said: ‘He had a bath, cooked for me and then began making soft sexual advances to me at the dinner table.

‘I consistently said no but he just kept pushing and cajoling me, with leering and witty put-downs about his being good at this etc. He came down on me and I froze up with terror.

‘I kept saying I did not want him to continue forcing me, but was terrified that he would become violent.’

Sir Clement then took her by the hand to her parents’ bed, where he ‘brutally’ raped her.

After he had finished, she recalled: ‘Then he just got up, said, “You can stay there, my dear,” and went next door to watch the World Cup in our living room.’ Joanne, who claimed she was left bleeding for a week, called one of her friends that evening and told her what had happened.

She also tried to talk to her mother, who told her daughter it was only a ‘bad sexual experience’.

A year later Sir Clement was due to visit Joanne’s family home but she fled before he arrived.

He sent her a letter to say he was ‘grieved’ she had left and offered her theatre tickets.

It read: ‘I understand that you heard I was coming, and raced off into the night. This grieves me.

‘Next time, why don’t we have me race off into the night and you stay home. Alternatively, as I am now 86 and you are older than you were, may I send you a ticket to the National Theatre as a gesture of my continued affection.’ Freud was joking about his age. In fact, he was 55 at the time, some 37 years older than the young woman he allegedly raped.

Joanne said: ‘Freud was a clever man. As I now interpret what I witnessed as a child he used the personality flaws and the neuroses of others in order to manipulate them.’

Describing how the grooming affected her, Joanne said: ‘I live in constant terror that I will be found out, exposed. I have already suffered across nearly 40 years.

‘It is not simply to be labelled as depression or mental illness, this is disempowerment, self destructiveness and grief. This is what real suffering looks like.’

‘This is what real suffering looks like’