BETRAYED BY MAN WHO RAISED ME
Teen caught stepdad filming her in bath:
BEFORE November 27, 2018, Lauren Brightwood’s life was much like that of any other normal teenage girl. She attended college every day studying hair and makeup and had goals of passing her qualifications to get into university.
The 17-year-old was surrounded by a group of close friends who would frequently go out socialising. She had a happy home life and a close relationship with her mum and the rest of her family. But on the evening before her 18th birthday the life she knew changed for ever.
In preparation for her birthday the next day Lauren was undertaking a “pamper evening” and was relaxing in the bath when she looked up to see something black in the glass pane above the bathroom door.
On closer inspection, Lauren could see that the object was in fact a phone that belonged to her stepdad Craig.
Confused and scared, the 17-yearold wasn’t able to compute why her stepdad’s phone would be there and trailed through her brain to try to find an answer to what was happening.
Was the phone there by mistake? Was someone playing a prank on her?
The unsettling truth that Lauren’s brain didn’t want to approach was someone was filming her in the bath.
Lauren reached for her own phone and messaged her mum: “Come to the bathroom but don’t tell Craig.”
The 17-year-old student explained to her mum and confronted her stepdad, who reeled off a number of excuses including that he was checking on her as he thought she was crying and that the object was not his phone but the hoover.
Lauren and her mum Michelle, who had been married to Craig since Lauren was four years old, reported it to the police, to whom Craig admitted to secretly filming his stepdaughter a number of times since she was 13 years old.
Last month Thomas Craig Lewis, 35, pleaded guilty to two counts of voyeurism after incidents between 2014 and 2018. Lewis, from Capel Road in Llanelli, admitted the offences at Northampton Magistrates’ Court in September and will be sentenced at Northampton Crown Court on Friday, October 16.
But for Lauren, who is now 19, the past two years have been like nothing she could have imagined.
“It’s been a really difficult time and since it’s happened my life has completely changed. I’m not the same person I was before it happened. I’ll never fully trust people again, I struggle with being around older men, I’ve had to grow up so quickly,” said Lauren, who lived in Llanelli until 2017, and now works in a bank in Northampton
“I never had anxiety attacks before it but now I’ve suffered with anxiety, depression and thoughts of suicide. I’m a different person, I’m more guarded. When I go into a home I’ve never been in before I look around the room and check to see if there’s cameras there sometimes,” added the former Bryngwyn School pupil.
Lauren and mum Michelle Lewis, who have since chosen to change their surnames to Brightwood, said they’d had limited contact with Craig since it happened, but struggled to look back on their lives together as a family.
“He basically raised me, I’d known him since I was four, we had any normal father-daughter relationship and I think my mum really struggles because she blames herself.”
Michelle said: “I was traumatised, I can’t look back at our family photos together, I can’t think about our holidays because I see everything differently but I completely trusted him, it’s what you do in a relationship – I used to let him bath her.
“It’s really difficult as a mum, her innocence was taken away from her and she had to grow up so quickly, she missed out on so many things that she’ll never get back, she’ll never turn 18 again, she used to be so carefree and her personality has completely changed.”
But, along with their mental struggles since the incident, the pair have also been in financial difficulty after losing a second income in the family.
Lauren, who took three weeks off college after the incident, didn’t gain the qualifications she needed because she had taken time off and ultimately left education to get a job in order to help her mum out.
Although Lewis’ family had been part of Lauren’s life since she was a little girl, she has not seen some of them since the incident.
“It felt like I was losing everything except my mum. He was going on holidays and out with friends and had a new girlfriend, and me and my mum were suicidal,” added Lauren.
While the mum and daughter wish to see justice, they say that no sentence will make up for what they’ve been through over the past two years.
“I don’t know if he’ll ever understand how it has affected us, I don’t think he cares, but I get PTSD all the time, I don’t trust anyone, I don’t know if I will again, and when you don’t trust people, things are really lonely,” said Michelle.
Lauren also worries about the longterm trust issues that may now be ingrained in her: “I worry about what it’ll be like when I have children, I don’t trust people myself, so I can’t imagine what I’ll be like when I’m a mother.”
But one positive the pair have found is that the already close relationship the mother and daughter had once had has been cemented over the past couple of years.
“When it first happened, my first instinct was to tell my mum and she believed me straight away, she’s never questioned me about it, it’s been just me and her, but we have a really good relationship,” said Lauren.
Michelle added: “I know Lauren and I know the kind of person she is. My number one priority has always been her and it’s been tough but I know we’ll get through it.”
Since going through mental health struggles, Lauren has decided to launch an Instagram and Youtube channel where she shares her story in the hope that it can help others and encourage other victims to come forward.
“It’s been hard, but I’ve never regretted telling my mum or the police. Talking about it, writing about it and hearing other people going through things has really helped me and I would really encourage other people to come forward as well.”