I found out my father was a child molester |

Publish date: 2022-08-03

I found out my father was a child molester

While I was growing up, I had no idea that my parents didn't love each other. I didn't notice that my dad seemed despondent, that they never spoke to one another unless they had to. They rarely yelled and, to me, everything seemed normal.

Back then, I would have said I had a great relationship with my dad. I would have said he was a geologist, even though he had flunked university three times. (The last time my pregnant mother begged the dean to readmit my father, who then spent all his time flirting with other women in the school cafeteria when he should have been in class. Needless to say, he failed again.) I brought home rocks and he would explain that the clear bits were actually quartz and not diamonds, that the "gold" I had found was actually granite and would not make us rich. He showed me how to make a computer program that would do my times tables. When I couldn't sleep, he would sit me down beside him, pull out the atlas and show me how the frontlines of the Great War had cut through France and Belgium. Or we would pore over pictures of the universe as he tried to explain the theory of the Big Bang.

When I was 11, Dad announced that he had a stomach ache and was going away for a while. He moved into my grandad's house and we saw him at weekends. After a few weeks, he moved in with his girlfriend and two of her children. Despite how she felt about him, my mother was determined that he should continue to have a relationship with my sisters and me. She arranged for us to spend weekends with him and his new "family". But he never called me, never initiated any conversation, and though my mother insisted he loved me, I knew he didn't love me enough.

I stopped spending weekends with him, ignored him at family functions, refused to invite him to my high school graduation. I went to university, moved far away from home, got a job, found a flat. I met boys, fell in love, fell out of love, fell in love again. Occasionally, I wondered what I would do if I ever got married or had children. If he ever got sick or died. Sometimes I thought I would be too angry to go to his funeral; sometimes I thought I would be consumed by grief and guilt.

He did call me once, only the second time he had since he'd gone. He told me he thought his girlfriend had left him for good, and asked for my address, saying he wanted to write to me. He never did.

Then my mother called. Nothing extraordinary about that: she calls every week. Except this time she sounded anxious. Her voice broke as she asked if my father had ever touched me or any of my sisters inappropriately, or taken pictures of us naked when we stayed with him. I told her he hadn't; she told me he had been arrested for child pornography.

Over the next few months, I learned that my dad's girlfriend had found photos of her youngest daughter on his computer. That he had pleaded guilty to charges of child molestation and abusing a relationship of trust.

She was 10 when it started. When she was three, I used to walk her to the park and sing songs with her in the car. My sisters and I ate with her and shared her room. We fought with her over toys and the television. I got upset the first time I heard her call him "Dad".

How much of a parent is passed on to their children? We know our hair colour, eye colour and facial features are all a result of inherited genes. But what other parental traits are contained in our DNA? Do we inherit aspects of their personality? Do I like dill pickles because my mother likes them? Am I good at maths because my dad was good at it? Deep down, am I also a pervert, just like my father? Logically, I know I am not a child molester just because my father was. But I can't help feeling tainted somehow, as if I am the one who has a criminal record.

I haven't told many people why my father is in jail. Sometimes I wonder if it is because I am ashamed of him. Sometimes I wonder if it is because I am afraid I will be perceived differently. And sometimes I wonder if it is because I am afraid I will perceive myself differently.

· Do you have an experience to share? Email: experience@theguardian.com

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7tbTEoKyaqpSerq96wqikaKyYmrS2rdGdoJqmX2d9cYOOo5inZ2FofLixxKScp5xnY8SmscqepZ1p