OVER ATTACK
stairs before I realised he was behind me,” she says. “He started telling me what he wanted to do and I was telling him it wasn’t going to happen.
“I picked Dellah up and held her. Carl said, ‘You know what I’ve done in the past don’t you? I’m going to rape you.’ I had no idea what he was talking about but I was scared.
“He took Dellah from my arms and chucked her in the cot and then he got this Picture: JOHN GLADWIN look in his eyes which said it’s going to happen. I knew then there was no point fighting.” Claire was raped at Dellah’s bedroom door as her little girl watched crying from her cot. Twisted Robinson attacked her for a full horrifying five minutes before dragging her into the hall to force her to watch a second assault in front of a mirror. Son Frankie was mercifully asleep in a nearby bedroom and Reuben was on a sleepover – but the plight of Claire’s children meant nothing to Robinson. Before leaving 20 minutes later, he whispered his death threat in her ear. “Suicide was the first thing on my mind – and that thought still pops into my head on my worst days,” she says. It was only her love for her children that kept her from going through with it in the weeks that followed. Today Claire knows it is unlikely her little girl will recall the terrifying attack. But she says: “No child should see what Dellah saw. It makes me feel sick. What kind of a man does that, let alone in front of a crying baby? He’s not a human being. He’s an animal.”
GUILT
While she hopes her story will inspire rape victims to come forward, Claire wants other young women not to make the mistake she did – of being too trusting.
Ninety per cent of rapes are committed by men known to their victims.
She says: “I now realise I’d got in with a bad crowd and naively trusted the wrong people. I felt guilt over reporting him as he was my friend’s boyfriend – but how could I not? I had no idea I’d lose friends because his partner chose to stand by him.
“It was awful. Those who don’t believe you are not real friends. It might hurt, but it makes you realise who you can trust in life.
“His defence tried to make out we were in some sort of a relationship. Why would she buy his lies? At the very least, she would have thought he was cheating on her. At worst, he was a rapist. Yet she stood by him at every court appearance.
“I try not to think about either of them now. I just want to get on with my life and try to concentrate on my children.”
As Robinson, who has previous convictions for GBH and assault, languishes in jail Claire is planning a wedding after her new boyfriend proposed.
She said: “I’ve finally got a happy ending. And I’m proud of myself for helping convict Robinson. After all I went through, that guilty verdict meant people on the jury I didn’t know believed me – unlike the friends I’ve left behind.” grace.macaskill@ trinitymirror.com