'I was sexually abused by my dad and raped by his friend as a child - I'm campaigning to help other kids after coming to terms w...
An 84-year-old author claims she was sexually abused by her father and raped by his friend when she was two and a half and did not discover the extent of the “horrendous” trauma until her 50s during therapy. She is now devoting herself to protecting the lives of children with her campaign, after finally “accepting” herself at 79. Helene Pascal-Thomas, a retired teacher and counsellor who lives in London, grew up in a small provincial town in post-war France, describing her upbringing as “conventional”. She said her parents, who she does not wish to name, had an unhappy marriage, her mother being both “needy and controlling” and her father “solemn and severe”, and she found escapism through reading books, where she learned of adventures, relationships and survival. In her teenage years, as her curiosity about sex and relationships grew, she asked her parents “what f****** meant” one day, and she was subsequently sent to a convent school aged 14. There she found “there was something...