I saw I was not the only one

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Twelve years ago, two extraordinary women set up an organisation to support mothers whose children have been sexually abused. Julie Bindel hears some of their stories
Jemma Maguire was living happily with her second husband and her two sons and two daughters from a previous marriage. Then, in 1999, "completely out of the blue", her six-year-old daughter, Mindy, revealed that she had been sexually abused by her stepfather. "And just as we were trying to cope with that, I then discovered that my 11-year-old daughter, Franki, had also been abused by him," says Maguire.
Finding out what had happened to her daughters was, says Maguire, the worst experience of her life. And it is so much harder, says Maguire, when the abuser is a loved member of the same family. "I threw my partner out as soon as I found out what he had been doing," says Maguire, "but the police decided to take no action against him."
Franki laid the blame for the abuse on her mother for failing to protect her and Mindy, and became very overprotective of her younger sister. But worse was to come: "The boys did not believe it had happened so there was quite vicious fighting between the brothers and their sisters."
Franki began sleeping around and shoplifting. "She was drinking and got in with a really bad crowd," says Maguire. "She even became violent towards me. I was terrified."
As a result of the sexual abuse, Franki developed a hatred for her body, and began to self-harm. It became so bad that she began to say she wanted to have sex-change surgery, and would not leave her bedroom for days at a time.
But Maguire was lucky - if you can call it that - she was one of the first mothers to receive support from a group aimed at helping people like her. Social services referred her to Mothers of Sexually Abused Children (Mosac), based in Blackpool.
Through counselling, and just being able to talk to people who understood their plight, the family was able to repair some of the damage.
Then when Franki was 15, she became pregnant. "Franki could not pretend any longer that she didn't need her mum," says Maguire, "and I was just waiting for that moment. As it happens, the baby bonded us."
Now, thanks to Mosac, the family has become close again, says Maguire, and in some ways they have formed an even closer bond than before the abuse.