‘MY STEPDAD RAPED AND SEXUALLY ABUSED ME FOR YEARS’ Young woman bravely shares her story in the hope it will encourage other victims of sexual abuse to speak out

FOR the first decade of her life, Nicholas Lloyd acted as somewhat of a father figure to Chantal Hannan. He was married to her mother, lived in her home, and after the death of her biological father when she was a baby, was a constant adult figure in her life.

To the public he portrayed himself as a normal family man, but behind closed doors he was conducting a violent campaign of sexual abuse against the young girl which would last for eight years.

One day, “out of nowhere”, Lloyd sexually assaulted Chantal. She was just 10 years old.

From there, every opportunity he got to be alone with the vulnerable youngster, he would abuse her - raping her on several occasions.

Not content with this secret torment, Chantal said on one occasion he even violated her in public.

She thought she was the only victim. It was only when at 19 she decided to report to police what had been happening to her that she came to realise she was not alone.

On March 8, 2023, Swansea Crown Court heard how Lloyd began his reign of sexual violence against three victims - one being Chantal - when he was a teenager and carried on into his 40s.

He was handed an extended 28-year sentence for public protection and will be a registered sex offender for the rest of his life.

The 51-year-old had been convicted at trial of 20 counts, including rape of a woman, rape of a girl under 13, rape of a girl under 16, indecent assault, gross indecency with a child, sexual assault, and engaging in sexual activity with a child.

Relating specifically to Chantal, he was found guilty of two counts of sexual assault of a child under 13, one count of rape of a child under 13, three counts of sexual activity with a child, and three counts of rape.

Lloyd’s victims were forced to relive their collective trauma multiple times in the five years between his arrest and subsequent incarceration.

Re-trials, barrister strikes and staffing issues meant the trial was cancelled and moved several times, forcing the victims to “relive it” constantly.

Now aged 24 and with her perpetrator jailed, Chantal, from Newport, says she can “finally breathe” and start “living” her life.

She has bravely decided to waive her automatic right to anonymity to share what happened to her in the hope it will encourage other people who have been victims of sexual abuse to come forward.

Chantal said her biological dad died in 2003 and Lloyd was already in a relationship with her mother at that point.

By the time the abuse started when she was 10, he had been in her life in some shape or form since she was very young.

She said their relationship completely changed one day when he assaulted her out of the blue while she was watching television.

“It was sudden, out of nowhere. One day, not long after I had had a bath, I came down and I was watching TV before I went to bed and he sat next to me and started touching me over the top of my clothing,” she said, adding that he would touch her breasts and thighs.

“I don’t think I was 100% sure it wasn’t right, but I had some sort of feeling then that it wasn’t right. I had a bit of fear which is why I didn’t say anything then. I didn’t question anything because I was still very young at that point.”

From here, Lloyd - who would have then been in his late 30s - regularly abused Chantal.

“It was just random occasions, there wasn’t a pattern to it. It always happened when there was nobody else in the house other than myself and him.”

She said that for the most part he would take advantage of times he knew the two would be at home alone.

“It did often happen on a Sunday. My mum would go with his mother, to like a little bingo session, on a Sunday evening around 5pm or 6pm,” said Chantal.

“So it would often happen around then because there was no-one in the house.

“It started with touching above clothes, and then it progressed on to where he would put his penis in my mouth. And then it was touching underneath clothes.

“It got worse and worse to the point where he forced himself upon me and had sex with me.”

Chantal says it affected other relationships in her life as she didn’t feel able to talk about what was happening.

“I was in a relationship at that point which ended a few months before he was arrested and I think that was down to my feelings,” she said.

“It affected my mental health quite a bit. I think I got to that point in the relationship where I needed to tell somebody, but I didn’t want to.

“I didn’t feel like I could take that relationship any further without speaking the truth. And at that point, I didn’t feel like it was the right time to speak the truth.

“I felt like my mum would hate me if I spoke up or I wouldn’t be believed. As a child you tell little white lies and I thought if I said he’s touched me it would be brushed off and then I’d be in trouble myself then for lying.

“He didn’t work and so he was here all the time. It wasn’t like I could feel relieved while he was working.

“When I was at home, it was constant because he didn’t work, he was always around.”

While the abuse was going on, Chantal says her perpetrator didn’t speak to her.

He never showed any “remorse” and didn’t even tell her to keep quiet, arrogantly assuming she wouldn’t say anything.

She says she was particularly vulnerable at this time as she was dealing with delayed grief for her father, who she found out had taken his own life.

“He didn’t speak at all, he never said to me ‘don’t say anything’. It was just silence, which I think made things worse. Even though it was only a couple of minutes it just felt like it was going on forever.

“I was also dealing with the fact of what happened with my dad. I wasn’t told from a young age, because my dad [took his own life].

“I would say from about seven or eight I was told, but not to the full extent.

“So at that point, I was still grieving my dad because by then I knew the truth of what had happened, as well as dealing with what he [Lloyd] was doing to me as well.”

Chantal said Lloyd managed to hide the abuse from everyone else, despite it even happening in public on one occasion.

She said: “We were at an adventure park while on holiday, and we’d gone on this toboggan ride up through trees and I couldn’t go on one by myself – I had to go one with an adult and he was sat behind me.

“He put his hands up into my T-shirt in public and he still had them right until we came around the bend into public view.”

The sexual assaults would happen fairly regularly to varying degrees but on at least three occasions Chantal was raped by Lloyd.

Describing how she felt afterwards, she said: “I felt dirty, it made me feel like really dirty. I knew obviously he was married to my mum at that point.

“So it made me feel dirty and ashamed, that he was doing that to me while still sharing a bed with my mum, still living with my mum. And not making any signs that it was happening.”

The abuse continued until one day, it stopped out of the blue.

“It happened until I was around 17/18 and then one day it just stopped, nothing at all,” said Chantal.