Justice delivered
Then, in October 2015, my dad, Mark Hessing, 57, appeared at Manchester Crown Court and denied 13 charges of indecent assault.
I had to give evidence, which I did via video link because I couldn’t face seeing him.
To my relief, he was found guilty of all 13 indecent assaults and sentenced to four years in prison.
‘Is that all?’ I cried to Mum.
Worse, Dad appealed his sentence and I worried that he’d be given an even shorter prison time.
In March 2016, Dad’s case was reviewed by the Court of Appeal.
But instead of his sentence being cut, the judges deemed it too lenient, and it was upped to eight years.
Lady Justice Macur said that he had used me to satisfy his sexual urges.
I was glad Dad’s sentence was doubled. It could never undo the harm he’d done to me, but it was something. I felt vindicated. Maybe now he’d know what it was like to live in someone else’s prison.
Desperate for something good to come out of all this, Mum and I decided to start a charity to help people like me.
We called it Escape, and Kym Marsh and Simon Gregson from Coronation Street became our patrons.
Our dream is to raise enough money to build a huge house where victims can come and get away from it all.
Somewhere that they can feel safe.
Because, as I know all too well, when you’ve been the victim of childhood sexual abuse, you don’t know what ‘safe’ feels like.
Mum blamed herself and felt so guilty but there’s no-one to blame other than my dad.
People think I should hate him, but I don’t.
He’s still my dad. I pity him because he must be a very troubled man to have taken my innocence like he did.
I’ve thought about writing to him or going to visit to try to get some answers. But I know he’d lie, so there’s no point.
So I’ll never understand why this happened to me.
When I was little, I thought Dad abused me because he loved me.
Now, I don’t think he ever loved me at all. He can’t have done. Because you don’t hurt the people you love.
People think I should hate him, but I don’t