Dad had sex with 16-year-old daughter without consent numerous times, Derby court finds

A Derby court has found that a dad-of-two had sex with his 16-year-old daughter without her consent numerous times, with her whole family refusing to believe the allegations. The girl, who cannot be named, raised the allegations in March 2022 but in February 2023 withdrew her support for the criminal prosecution of her father, now a proven sexual abuser, citing pressure from family members and mental health concerns.

She maintains that the allegations are true despite consistent pressure from her own family members to withdraw them, with blame for poor family health pinned on the daughter. Derby Family Court saw Derbyshire County Council put forward the now 18-year-old woman’s allegations in order to assess the potential risk to her younger sister, now aged 14.

The Local Democracy Reporting Service was permitted to report on the case by Recorder Lois Aldred under an ongoing national family court reporting pilot, with extensive restrictions on identifiable information about the people involved, including the victim and aggressor. Recorder Aldred, giving her judgment on Thursday, December 12, detailed that because the case was being heard in family court and was not a criminal case, she could not classify the father’s actions as rape, only sex without consent.

The hearings were not to pursue criminal conviction of the father for those crimes, now proven by the family court, so there will not be an associated direct punishment for those offences as there might be if it was a trial. However, through the family court system there may be restrictions placed on the father in relation to his future contact with his younger daughter, which is yet to be determined and will be decided in April.

The mother of both daughters has expressed concerns throughout the case about the unsupervised contact between the father and the younger daughter going forward, with the council pushing for restrictions and the father asking for unsupervised visitation but restricted to public places. In her judgement, Recorder Aldred said that the father had had sex without consent with his then 16-year-old daughter in hotel rooms numerous times while travelling around the UK following a sports team and that this then continued on countless occasions in the home they shared with the father’s partner and her son – often while staying up late to watch sports games on TV, sometimes in or on his bed.

This occurred between December 5, 2021 and January 29, 2022. Other proven facts were the father’s touching of his 16-year-old daughter’s private parts and his forcing his daughter to touch his own private parts, and many other lewd sexual acts.

The court had heard that the father had a history of control and sexual abuse of his two previous partners, including his partner at the time of the offences and the mother of the daughter who brought the allegations – who both gave evidence during the hearings. This included allegations of raping the mother, performing sexual acts on the partner while she was asleep, domestic violence, coercive control – including sole control of the bank account and tracking phone locations – and aggressive sexual encounters.

The father denies all of the allegations in their entirety and said he maintained a good relationship with his older daughter, though he claimed to have never discussed the allegations with her. Court documents provided to the Local Democracy Reporting Service under the transparency pilot show the father had planned to take his younger daughter abroad “when no findings are made against him”.

His case had been that his daughter had made up the allegations against him as a means to go and live with her paternal grandparents and to get back at him for being grounded and being unable to see her boyfriend due to an expensive pair of his headphones going missing. Recorder Aldred found that the father had lied to the court and to the police on numerous occasions about the sexual abuse and the events around it “because he knows the allegations (the daughter) makes are true” and lied about details were “because it points to guilt or may”.

She found that the “historic abuse (of his two previous partners) demonstrates the propensity of the father to disregard the unwillingness of his sexual partners” and that he was “unable to demonstrate sexual control”. A legal representative for a court-appointed guardian for the younger daughter had said of the older daughter: “She talks about being less worried about (younger daughter) because ‘dad knows his limits’. She said ‘he wouldn’t try to have sex with someone who doesn’t know what sex is. I know because he asked me if I had enjoyed sex’.”

The court heard how the relationship between the father and older daughter changed when she became sexually active with her first boyfriend. Jokes and memes, dubbed “racy” and “inappropriate” by the county council – withheld by the court from the Transparency Order – were being sent to the daughter by the father on WhatsApp “blurring the sexual boundaries”.

Recorder Aldred said this included “all the hallmarks of the father trying to bring sex into conversation”. She said: “I find it surprising why he has not asked her once about why she has brought the allegations. Maybe because he knows them to be true.”

The court had considered a video of the daughter’s police interview in March 2022 – with the daughter not appearing in court during the hearings – with Recorder Aldred finding the video statement “entirely truthful, powerful, convincing and consistent” and that her experiences were clearly “deeply traumatic” – made worse by the disbelief of her whole family. Both former partners gave evidence to the court about sexual behaviours which the older daughter had also raised during her police statement, which the Recorder found “unlikely for her to know about had she not experienced it herself”.

The court heard that the older daughter had still sought to travel to a further sports match away from home with the father after the allegations and that she is said to have hugged the father at Christmas. Recorder Aldred made clear that there is “no typical response to rape” along with there being “no typical perpetrator”, with some rape victims, instead of choosing “fight or flight”, choose “befriend”.