Abuse victim’s life of terror

Abuse victim’s life of terror

13 July 2022

A VICTIM of paedophile Newcastle pensioner Sean Small has revealed she was so traumatised by the ordeal he put her through that she lost a baby and even attempted suicide. 

The woman and a teenage girl were victims of 80 year-old Small, a widower from Slievenabrock Avenue, who was jailed for six years at Newry Crown Court last week.  

The woman said she is heartened by the fact that her abuser is behind bars, but has been left so unsettled by the impact of her experience that she can’t leave her house without her father.

“Wherever my father goes, I go,” she told the Recorder following Small’s sentencing, explaining how the pensioner had first tried to kiss her and progressed to inappropriately touching her.

The victim, who lives locally but does not wish to be identified, explained part of her fear about going out is down to death threats Small made against her family to maintain her silence.

The young woman, who lives with her parents, now wants them to move house because she is too haunted by the memories of her abuse within its walls. She said that worse still was the mental trauma which left her suicidal once the court case began.

“It was too much seeing him in court and too much going into it all, getting into my head again,” she revealed.

The woman said she had to flee to England to escape Small’s abuse and that it was there she had a miscarriage. The relationship with the father of the child also ended as a result of her difficulty in coping with everything that had been happening to her since 2016. 

Small’s abuse only came to light after it was revealed that a relation of the woman’s, who was only a teenager, told her own mother what Small had been subjecting her to. 

During Small’s court case, it was revealed he had “offered to pay her £85 to have sex with him” and even though she refused, he advised her “to think about it”.

When the teenager’s mother confronted his older victim, she also came clean that Small had preyed upon her too.

Despite everything, the woman no longer feels suicidal, four years after the abuse began.

“That was scary for anybody to watch and I still get into dark moods but that’s under control now,” she said, revealing she is working with her GP to secure further counselling in an endeavour to improve her mental health and her future.

The woman said her state of mind has improved because Small has a ten year restraining order banning him from going near her.

Meanwhile, the victim’s mother blames herself for what happened.

“I was sick to the teeth,” she revealed when she discovered what had happened to her daughter in her very own home.

“I blame myself, though she keeps saying I can’t blame myself but as a mother I keep asking myself how I couldn’t see it? If I’d known there was a first time it would have been the last time. Seeing him [Small] in court I wanted to lunge at him,” she said.

“I could barely look at him. It broke my daughter’s heart and all our hearts. I don’t think it will ever be OK because I was blind to the whole thing. If I knew about it I would never have let him in my front door. 

“I never sleep because of this and I’m not sure I’ll be 100 per cent about it but I’m trying. I’m trying to be strong for my daughter and to be there for them all,” she said.

“They all say it’s not my fault and that these paedophiles are very clever and know how to do this so that nobody knows.”

The victim’s father said his daughter was a “vulnerable” person whose voice had to be heard.

“She is the victim here. She lost a baby and a boyfriend over it but we, her family, are collateral damage too,” he said.

The man equated his daughter’s experience to the feeling that a terminal illness meant certain, imminent death.

“It was like hearing you have cancer and you had three days to live. That’s what it felt like when we found out what had happened to her. My daughter just wants to know two things: why he did it and why he never apologised for it?”

The father is now calling on all victims of abuse who are too afraid to speak out to come forward.

He added: “Victims’ voices are out in the wilderness and they put a front on. But they only way they can try to get their lives back and to start afresh is by coming forward and speaking out.”