I carefully carried my bowl of cornflakes through to the lounge room, turned on the TV then sat down to watch Dora the Explorer.
My mum’s new boyfriend Nick was staying over and I knew they always slept until midday so I had to get my own breakfast. When they finally got up, Nick stormed into the lounge room and flicked off the TV.
“You know I don’t like her watching this drivel,” he raged to Mum.
I was four, and Nick wasn’t my dad, but he acted like it. He hated bad table manners and always corrected my grammar. He introduced a lot of new rules and Mum just went along with it.
Still, he was usually only around on the weekends, so I tried to grin and bear it.
But a few years later we moved in with Nick.
Now it was his house and his rules all the time.
One day, I came home from school, and Nick and Mum were waiting for me. They marched me upstairs into the spare bedroom.
It was empty apart from a single chair.
Suddenly Nick pulled out a cane made from a small branch from the garden. Mum told me to bend over the chair.
“Don’t move,” she ordered.
She pulled my skirt up, yanked my panties down and held me firmly by the shoulders.
I felt the air move behind me and whack!
Nick started thrashing me.
The pain took my breath away.
When the beating was over, I hobbled to my room and lay on my bed, too shocked to cry.
Karyn in 2012.
I didn’t even know what I’d done wrong.
After that, Nick started adding up ‘behaviour points’ against me. If I broke one of his strict rules, I’d get a point.
When I got six, I’d be punished so I lived in constant fear.
One day, when he came into my room to deliver another beating, I threw my arms around his legs.
“Please don’t do this,” I begged, tears streaking my face.
He smirked and said, “If you don’t want to be beaten, you can do something else instead.”
He unzipped his trousers and forced himself into my mouth.
I gagged and thought I was going to be sick. When he’d finished he walked out as if nothing had happened.
I was too scared to tell anyone and over the next four years the abuse continued. I was desperate for Mum to notice that something was wrong, but she never did.
Karyn at her first wedding in Jan 1995 with her step father.
When I was 11, Mum and Nick had a little girl together. A son followed soon after.
Mum had always made it clear I was a mistake who had ruined her life, but she and Nick doted on my brother and sister. Mercifully the sexual abuse stopped after they arrived.
The moment I turned 16, I left home.
I loved my siblings but I couldn’t live in that house of horrors a moment longer.
Despite everything, I stayed close to my family. When I got married at 24, Nick even gave me away, but keeping his dirty secret took its toll, and I struggled with depression.
When I was 27, I decided to confront Nick.
One day, I found him on his own and said, “What were you playing at all those years ago?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” he replied.
I kept on at him and eventually he relented.
“I was teaching you about the birds and the bees,” he said. “I thought you liked it.”
I was furious. How dare he try to justify his sick behaviour?
“You going to go to the police then?” he asked.
I hated him for what he’d done to me, but didn’t want to hurt my brother and sister by revealing the truth about their perverted father.
I told her what Nick had done.
“Did you know what he was doing with me?” I asked.
A tear rolled down her cheek.
“I’ll speak to Nick when I get home,” she said.
I hoped that finally, for once, she would stand up for me. But when I asked her about it a few weeks later she sighed.
“Karyn, it’s all in the past now. Let’s not talk about it anymore,” she said.
I felt like I’d been smacked in the face.
I texted her: You knew what happened and you did nothing. I’m going to the police.
She didn’t even respond.
Reliving the abuse to the police made me feel like a vulnerable child again but it was time I got justice.
Mum and Nick were arrested, and when word got out, Nick’s niece Cheryl got in touch.
She said she’d been abused by her grandfather, Philip Packer, who was Nick’s dad.
Like father, like son, I thought bitterly.
Cheryl had reported him and he’d been jailed for indecent assault and indecency with a child.
Karyn and her partner now.
“I’d love to give you support if you want it,” she told me in a text.
In time, Nicholas Packer, 65, appeared in court and pleaded not guilty to nine counts of indecent assault, four of gross indecency with a child under 16 and one of assault – against me and three other girls.
My mum, Anne Packer, 59, denied assault for holding me down during that first beating.
They were both found guilty and I felt vindicated. Cheryl was there in court with me, holding my hand as they were sentenced.
Nick was jailed for 11 years while Mum was given a three-month sentence, suspended for a year.
The impact it’s had on my life has been huge. I’ve got two failed marriages behind me.
Cheryl has been an amazing support. She understands what I’ve been through and we’ve become close.
Now I’m trying to use my experience to help other abuse survivors.
Paedophiles thrive on the sense of guilt and shame their victims feel.
By speaking out, I hope to shed some light on to that darkness and encourage others to come forward and bring their abusers to justice.
*Karyn and Cheryl have waived their right to anonymity.
As told to Take 5’s Helen O’Brien.
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