Esther: My mother made me socialise with creepy ‘ uncle’ who molested me
DAME ESTHER Rantzen reveals today how her mother forced her to socialise with a family friend who molested her as a child.
The veteran broadcaster was sexually abused at the age of 15 but says her mother Katherine refused to accept she had been assaulted and saw no reason why the man, who had been like an uncle to her, should be shunned.
Recalling her ordeal on today’s Desert Island Discs, the 78-year-old tells presenter Lauren Laverne: ‘He was no blood relative. I can see him to this day. He used to call me bright eyes and he had one of those creepy smiles. He took me out to buy me a present and he found a way of getting me alone and he sexually abused me.
‘Not the most serious assault, but still horrible. He told me not to tell anyone. I told my mum and she didn’t really believe me. So that was educational.’
Dame Esther says she managed to get her abuser out of her life only when she turned 18. ‘My mum, like many parents, cared about the social circle she moved in… and in a way wanted me to carry on meeting him. I said under no circumstance, so I didn’t when I was 18, but I did up to then,’ she says.
The mother-of-three, who founded the child protection charity Childline in 1986, only revealed her abuse ordeal in 2011. She wonders
‘I told my mum and she didn’t really believe me’
whether her reluctance to talk about the assault was a sign of her attempting to hide what had happened. ‘ Whether I blocked it or whether I chose to forget it, is that the same thing maybe?’ she asks.
Dame Esther says that despite the incident she has only happy memories of her childhood with her sister and her parents.
‘ My father and mother were absolutely terrific,’ she says. ‘Their ambition for us was to get educated and have careers and so on.’
Dame Esther also reveals she wished the circumstances of how she met her future spouse – television producer Desmond Wilcox, were different – the pair conducted a secret eight-year affair while he was married to one of her friends.
She says: ‘Of course I didn’t want that to happen and nor did Desmond. I suppose if he or I had been tougher we would have emigrated or done something drastic, but we just fell deeper and deeper in love.
‘Our marriage lasted and we had three wonderful children so I don’t regret it, but I wished it had happened differently.’
Dame Esther’s public profile meant she was forced to bear the brunt when details of the affair were made public.
‘It did feel like having your guts pulled out and examined,’ she says. ‘It was horrible. At the time I didn’t see that this was the inevitable price of being well known. I didn’t see that the huge publicity was something that I deserved.
‘Now it would be so much worse. I didn’t have these horrible anonymous trolls pursuing people in the way that they do. So I suppose I should count myself lucky.’
She also talks movingly about the loss of Wilcox, who died in 2000. ‘It’s a thing you don’t get over,’ she says. ‘You manage it. For me it’s actually the happy times I find hardest – when the grandchildren were born and they didn’t know him. But my children are making sure that they know exactly who he was and what he was like.’
The former That’s Life presenter believes she was fortunate to start her career when she did, and doubts her younger self would be hired today because of the emphasis on looks. She says: ‘A few generations earlier I don’t think I could have done it. A few generations later I wasn’t nearly pretty enough. I think I have been very lucky.’ Desert Island Discs is on Radio 4 at 11.15am today.