‘I was raped by dad as a teen and had his baby – mum’s reaction horrified me’

The American woman said she is still rebuilding her life with the support of therapy after enduring years of abuse from her father

A woman claims she was raped by her own father over a horrific four-year ordeal and subsequently gave birth to his baby. After breaking her silence on the traumatic event – she was then faced with rejection from her own family.

Speaking without revealing her identity on the Other People’s Lives podcast, the 22-year-old first described what she thought was a “good relationship” with her dad during her early years, before discovering his behaviour was anything but normal.

She remembered him repeatedly showing her explicit material on adult sites and TV, wandering about unclothed, and purchasing cannabis for her as a teen.

When questioned about when she first recognised something was wrong, she said it was around the age of 13 when she overheard him making inappropriate sexual remarks about her friends.

“I remember being in the car and he mentioned one of my friends and said she had a ‘fat a**e,'” she recalled. “It made me really uncomfortable.”

Soon after, she said he began commenting on her physique and how she was developing into a woman. “He phrased it as if it was my job to please him,” she said.

From then on, the podcast guest remembered her father requesting massages during the night while her mum and two younger siblings were asleep.

“He would ask me to massage his back, then his legs, and it slowly moved closer to his genitals,” she told presenters Joe Santagato and Greg Dybec.

“He asked me to start doing more massages in that area.” Describing when the abuse escalated, the woman said her father summoned her to the kitchen one evening and sexually assaulted her. “There wasn’t much I could say at the time,” she admitted.

He then instructed her to keep it a secret, cautioning that their family would crumble and end up on the streets if she said a word. “I took keeping it a secret seriously because of the way he laid out those consequences,” she elaborated.

The abuse, as per the podcast guest, occurred weekly for roughly three years, primarily in the family home’s basement. In another shocking revelation, she suspected her mother was aware of the abuse but chose to ignore it.

“She said, ‘I’m going to find out what is going on between you two’ and never said anything after that,” she remembered. “I feel like she purposely ignored it and just allowed it to happen,” she added, noting that her mother was “hardly emotionally and physically present” due to her job.

It was at 16 when she realised something was seriously wrong with her father’s actions. This realisation dawned on her when she started dating her first boyfriend and noticed that such behaviour wasn’t seen in his family.

After moving out of the family home for two months and blocking her parents’ numbers, she recalled getting tipsy at a party and revealing all about the abuse she had endured. “I was glad that I did because keeping a secret like that for so long is really hard, like to function,” she confessed.

She later also plucked up the courage to confide in her mother, only to be met with a “heartbreaking” response. “I’m thinking that she’s being receptive, that she’s listening to me, that she’s hearing what’s been happening to me and that she’s going to do something about it,” she revealed.

However, her mother reacted angrily when she disclosed the full extent of the abuse. “She starts to accuse me and say that her husband would never do that, that I’m lying and that I’ve always been a bad child,” she added.

The podcast caller claimed her mother even called the police in an attempt to have her arrested, and later turned physically violent towards her.

After managing to relay her ordeal to a police officer, the American said her father was barred from their family home during the investigation, although her family continued to visit him.

Once he was imprisoned on charges related to the abuse, she alleged that her family even fundraised for his bail. During this period, she entered foster care and discovered she was pregnant, already in her second trimester.

After giving birth to a baby girl, DNA tests confirmed her father was the biological parent, bolstering her evidence in the criminal case. Describing herself as “broken” at the time, she made the difficult decision to give her child up for adoption, telling the hosts: “As much as I did have good intentions for this child, I couldn’t be her mother. I couldn’t stop looking at this child and not see my father.”

As for her dad, she revealed he secured bail once more before removing his electronic tag and escaping to Africa.

After being informed that authorities couldn’t track him down, she was encouraged to abandon the case.

Wrapping up her account, she explained she’s cut ties with relatives who backed her dad, and has pursued counselling to address her trauma while working to piece her life back together.