Dad abused my sister & I thought, ‘Did he love her more?’
COLEEN Nolan has told of her torment after learning that her sister was raped by their dad.
Evil father Tommy abused the eldest of his daughters, Anne, when she was a young girl.
And Coleen said she was devastated by the news – because she thought it meant he loved her sister more than her.
She said: “My eldest sister told me when I was probably in my mid to late 20s that my dad abused her.
“I felt so upset for her. I couldn’t make my own feelings out all, except I remember crying because he hadn’t done it to me. And then I hated myself.
“I had to rationalise that it wasn’t that I wanted him to do it to me. It was just, ‘Did he love her more, then?’
“I rationalised it like that as a kid. It ED GLEAVE was the most confusing feeling I’ve ever had.” Tommy, who died in 1998, abused Anne while she was on tour with her sisters as part of The Nolans.
She has said he even suggested they run away together and live as husband and wife once she was 16. Coleen said: “I feel guilty that I don’t hate him. I think my sister probably finds it hard…why I don’t hate him? I have that confusion of why I don’t hate him.
“But I think it’s because, for all his faults, I have nothing where I can look back and think, ‘Oh yeah, maybe he was a bit like that’. I have nothing to relate that to.”
Coleen spoke out for Channel 5’s In Therapy, in which she went through a series of counselling sessions with relationship expert Mandy Saligari.
The Loose Women star was never sexually abused by Tommy, but regularly witnessed him having violent rows with her mum Maureen. She was also the victim of physical beatings.
She said: “The only time I hated him was when he drank. He was a horrible drunk.
“He became very aggressive and scary, really scary. He’d want a row with mum and give her a slap. I couldn’t bear it.
“Sometimes we’d be asleep in bed, me and my mum, and the door would open and he’d start saying things and I’d be lying there thinking, ‘Please just ignore him and he’ll go away’. But she’d start answering him back.
“My initial response was that I felt really sorry for her. But now, looking back, I feel really angry. Now I think, ‘You should have just left’.”
Coleen added: “I could have only been six and me and Linda and Bernie were sharing a room. They were fighting and my dad came in and he said because of her (Coleen’s mum) I’m going to have to smack her (Coleen’s sister) as well now’. And he battered all three of us.”
The full interview is on In Therapy in the New Year.