Karen Danczuk’s brother found guilty of raping her
KAREN Danczuk broke down in the dock as she told a court of her ‘secret torment’ and ‘horrendous life’ after being raped by her brother as a child.
Holding back tears, she told a jury she was regularly molested in the family home between the ages of six or seven until she was 15 or 16 by Michael Burke, who is five years older than her.
Mrs Danczuk, 33, the estranged wife of Rochdale MP Simon Danczuk and a former Kingsway councillor, told the jury at Manchester Crown Court, which convicted her brother of a series of sex attacks: “Most people remember their first time having sex with somebody they love.
“Whereas my first time of having sex was with my brother. It’s horrible. Even now I can’t sleep naked. I can’t even cuddle in bed. I will never love properly, I will never be able to let someone in.”
Burke, 38, of College Bank, a ‘controlling and violent’ man, denied 15 counts of rape, one attempted rape and one indecent assault against his sister and two other women, spanning an 18-year period from 1992 to 2010.
But on Wednesday, following a three-week trial, the jury found him guilty of eight counts of rape and another serious sexual offence against three different women, including three counts of rape against his sister between 1992 to 1994.
He was cleared of nine other serious sexual offences.
During the trial Mrs Danczuk, who waived her right to anonymity after the conviction, gave evidence from behind a curtain around the witness box, shielding her from the dock where her tormentor sat, often shaking his head in denial. She told of her unconventional and unhappy childhood, growing up in a terraced house in Middleton.
Mrs Danczuk said she was a ‘quiet’ child who was ‘heavily bullied’.
She wept and covered her face in the filmed police interview, played to the jury, telling the officer: “I just had flashbacks of the first time.
“I kept telling myself, don’t cry, don’t give him any more tears.”
One day she was doing the dishes at home and Michael was drying. She told him: “Stop it. Stop touching me.”
By then it had ‘ruined’ her schooling, with her leaving education with poor qualifications, she said. The second and third victims also broke down in tears as their video interviews were played in court.
Prosecutor Peter Wright QC told jurors Burke treated his victims as ‘objects of pleasure’ leaving them ashamed, violated and demeaned.
He vehemently denied the allegations but Mr Wright said he was someone who used ‘sex as a weapon’ against vulnerable women.
Burke’s knees buckled and he reeled in the dock, pressing on the glass barrier for support, as the guilty verdicts were returned.
He will be sentenced on December 15.