November 2014 Woman speaks out over childhood sexual abuse committed by her father A FORMER St Blazey man has been jailed for two and a half years after being convicted of indecently assaulting his daughter. Edward Whear, now 76, was sentenced to 30 months in prison, made subject to a sexual offences prevention order for seven years and ordered to remain on the Sex Offenders Register for life. Formerly of Rose Hill, St Blazey, he appeared before Newcastle Crown Court for sentence in October. His daughter, Lisa, has agreed to waive her right to anonymity to speak about the abuse she suffered at the hands of her father when she was just a young girl. Now 46, Lisa cannot remember how young she was when the abuse started but believes it began during her time in St Blazey, before the family moved away to North Shields, Newcastle, in 1976. “My first memory is of him pinning me down and I couldn’t move,” she says. “That was the first incident. Then we moved again and that’s when the night time visits started.” Lisa was brought to the attention of Social Services in 1978 when her mother, who died several years ago, asked for her to be placed in care because she could no longer manage her 10-year-old daughter’s behaviour. At that time Lisa’s mother told Social Services that her daughter had said her father had put his hand between her legs. Lisa had also been treated in hospital twice for vaginal bleeding, but the paediatrician who treated her was unable to say if this was linked to her allegations against her father. She was seen by a child psychologist and, in 1970, was placed in a residential school for ‘maladjusted children’. She stayed at the school for three years before returning to her parents. “No one spoke about why I had to be in boarding school,” she says. “I had told people but I was just shoved away, and I had to live with it.” When she was in her 20s Lisa repeated her allegations but said “no one ever told me I should go to the police”. “Nobody cared,” she adds. “It wasn’t an issue.” It wasn’t until last year – more than four decades after Lisa first spoke of the abuse – that she finally got the help she had wanted as a child. She has suffered from health problems for many years, and underwent major ureteric reimplantation surgery when she was 14 after numerous kidney infections. She now suffers from chronic pain and believes her problems could be down to the abuse she suffered as a child. But doctors struggled to find a cause for the pain, and it was the suggestion that it was psychosomatic that prompted her go to the police about her abuse. “I felt like that little girl again – not being believed,” she says. “I just broke down.” She called a helpline for adult survivors of childhood abuse and eventually decided to go to the police. “That was the first time anyone had properly asked me about it, and I cried for two weeks,” she adds. Lisa has since been diagnosed with the inflammatory condition sacroiliitis and with post traumatic stress disorder for which she is receiving counselling. The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) originally decided there wasn’t enough evidence to prosecute her father, but following a review of the case, it went to court earlier this month. The CPS has since apologised to Lisa for not bringing the prosecution. Whear, of Sheringham Avenue, North Shields was found guilty of three counts of indecent assault when he appeared at Newcastle Crown Court on October 10. Lisa is coming to terms with her past and rebuilding her life, but the anger remains that it took so long for her voice to be heard. “The system has let me down all my life,” she says. “I consider myself to have survived it, and I get on with things, but I told the truth all my life and no one listened. Now, I want them to listen.”