They stole my innocence and destroyed my childhood.. I’ll never recover
AT HANDS OF MONSTER PARENTS
in his trial at Reading Crown Court, Daniel’s father claimed he abused his son “to try and steer him in the right direction and not to go to the way of being gay, because there was like, sort of, tendencies for him to be gay”.
He added: “All I ever wanted was for him to turn out the right way.”
Daniel said: “Dad said that he did it to stop me being gay because I showed feminine traits as a child.
“One day we were at a car boot sale and my neighbour saw me wrestling an old lady for a handbag.
“She told my dad, ‘Your Dan’s going to bat for the other side’. And Dad said ‘No son of mine will be gay.’ I think the abuse started after that.”
It only stopped when Dowling and Breakspear split up around 1996. He claimed he broke up with her because she told him she’d had sex with Daniel and his grandad on the same day.
The teenager and his father moved to Weymouth, Dorset. But Daniel, then 16, was targeted by another paedophile. Police raided the pervert’s home and found naked pictures of Daniel. It was then, as he was being interviewed by a child psychologist, that Daniel revealed the years of abuse from his dad and stepmum.
Dowling was quizzed but claimed his son was an “attention seeking” liar. Daniel believes Breakspear was not questioned and there were no arrests.
The despairing youngster later tried to kill himself. When the case finally came to trial in May this year it was claimed police treated him “shoddily” at his 1998 video interview – and that one constable even mocked him.
Daniel says it was left to him, some 17 years later, to finally get justice. On September 6, 2015, he secretly recorded a phone conversation in which his father admitted the abuse.
Two days later Daniel walked into Staines police station, Surrey, with the recording – and he said that this time the police took him seriously. He said: “I don’t know if training has improved or if I was just unlucky the first time, but I would definitely encourage other victims of historic abuse to come forward and report it now.”
SORDID
Daniel’s dad admitted to police that he and Breakspear carried out “sordid and deplorable” abuse and that he felt ashamed and disgusted.
In court he claimed the abuse was to prevent Daniel “turning gay”, to “protect him from paedophiles so he would know what was right and wrong” – and to educate him about how he should treat women. He blamed his actions on “undiagnosed depression” and said he fell under the influence of Breakspear – who he labelled “a Jekyll and Hyde character”.
Breakspear was found guilty of three counts of indecent assault.
Dowling admitted one count of cruelty to a child and two counts relating to sexual offences involving a child. He was found not guilty of one count of indecent assault. Judge Maria Lamb told Dowling: “Your warped sense of right and wrong allowed him to be exploited by your then partner not just once but again and again. You’ve failed to protect him from the sexually predatory behaviour of your co-defendant.
“The damage is incalculable. The abuse of trust is monstrous and the reality is that one of you was involved in active sexual abuse and the other connived at it.”
The judge told Breakspear: “For your own perverted sexual gratification you initiated this boy into a world far beyond anything to which he should ever have had to be introduced at those tender years.”
Daniel, who has not spoken to his father for over two years, said: “Dad threw me under the bus instead of admit his guilt. He is dead to me now.”
Det Supt Fiona Grant, of Dorset Police, responded to criticism over the 1998 video interview.
Praising Daniel for his courage, she said: “The video met all necessary guidelines and was accepted as evidence during the trial at Reading.
“We conducted multi-agency professionals meetings with regards to his ongoing safeguarding.
“Dorset Police takes sexual assault extremely seriously. Do not suffer in silence, come forward and report it.”
Dad picked me up from Scouts and I got home to find stepmum naked, handcuffed to bed DANIEL DOWLING ON THREESOMES WITH PAEDOPHILE DAD AND PARTNER