'Two Sisters, One Rapist' - Santa Claus Dad Molest and Rape Daughters for 12 years

Nicola Twomey, 22, and Emma Wills, 27, were repeatedly abused by their own father, Kevin Twomey, who turned their family home in Port Talbot, South Wales, into a place of fear and pain. The sisters have revealed how they suffered in silence for 12 years.

Nicola's abuse started when she was just five-years-old and climaxed when Twomey raped her when she was 17. 

The siblings - conflicted by their love for their father and fear of breaking up their family - lived with their terrible secret for more than a decade before they eventually told their mother and the police the truth.

'He was my dad. I loved him so much and I didn't think he could hurt me like that.', Nicola said.

Elder sister Emma reveals how, after a happy start to childhood with her brother and younger sister, Twomey first started abusing her when she was just 10-years-old.

She recalled: 'I remember it like it was yesterday, unfortunately. I was going to start a piggy bank and my dad called me upstairs into his room and said he was going to give me money to start a piggy bank. I had to close my eyes and put my hands out and he'd give me money.

'Obviously… it wasn't money. I opened my eyes to see what he was doing and I ran downstairs and hid.'

On another occasion, she recalled how he groped her breasts telling her she needed to have them massaged if she wanted them to grow.

'When he was abusing me, he wasn't himself. He wasn't the father that I loved and respected. It was like somebody had taken over his body and he was a completely different person,' Emma said.

She was afraid to tell anyone after Twomey told her she must keep it a secret and she feared even if she did confess, nobody would believe her as her father was a respected member of the community.

Emma began to reject her father's advances and avoided being alone with him in their house. But she didn't realise that if her father couldn't have her, he would turn to her younger sister instead, even though she was only five-years-old.

Nicola said when he started abusing her he told her it was a game. Although he hurt her, Nicola was too young to realise her father was doing anything wrong or abusing her trust in the most abhorrent way.

She said: 'He just put his hand on my leg and then I didn't think nothing of it and it just started getting higher and higher and then he put his hand on my private parts.

'Because I was so young I didn't think it was anything wrong and I just sat there and then when he was finished he lifted me off his lap, put me on the floor and I just ran out and I didn't think nothing off it. At the time I thought it was normal.'

'I knew he was hurting me and I didn't like it. I kept telling him, you're hurting me, I don't want to play your game no more and he wouldn't really stop so I'd start crying. Then he'd stop, he'd walk out and I'd just be sitting there crying.'

Nicola only realised when she started school that her father's behaviour wasn't normal. But like her sister, she was too afraid to tell anyone for fear she wouldn't be believed. She also idolised her father and didn't want to destroy their family.

Nicola explains: 'My dad did a lot for the community, he used to do the scoring for the cricket team, he used to play Santa at Christmas times at the community centres, did a lot of work with rugby. He was well respected in the community. I was proud of my dad, there were a lot of things that my dad did that I looked up to him and he was so respected.

'From an outsider looking in we were the perfect family, we were happy, we did a lot of stuff together, you know, we were perfect.'  

The abuse only got worst as Nicola got older as her father forced her to participate in oral sex.

Unable to confide in anybody, she instead wrote about what had been happening in her diary.

She said: 'Every time he'd finish he'd always say, "please don't say anything, it's our little secret, you're going to break up the family if you do say anything, you know that don't you?"

'Sort of manipulating me to think that my whole world would come crumbling round me and I'd lose everything if I told anybody about it.'

'I lived in fear all the time. I always thought to blame myself. I thought, "why is he doing it to me, is it my fault, am I doing something?" I always tried to be the best daughter I could possibly be when we were out and about as a family because I thought if I'm good maybe he'll stop.'

Emma eventually discovered her sister had also been abused by their father after reading her diary one day. She was stunned that her father had moved on to her younger sister after she had rejected him.

 'I thought he would never do anything to my sister because I had pushed him away so many times. I didn't think he'd try it with my sister,' she said.

The girls felt better knowing they had one another to confide in but they are still too scared to speak out.  

'We didn't know what to do because we couldn't say anything because who'd believe two little girls over a respected man? Because we were such a close family we didn't want to split us all up,' Emma said.

When Emma was 22, she moved out of the family home after having a daughter, Amelia.

Nicola was then 17-years-old and had been fitted with a contraceptive implant as she had started a sexual relationship with a boy her age and didn't want to fall pregnant.

But her predatory father used this to his advantage to take his abuse of her a horrific step further by raping her.

Nicola finally realised she had to speak out. Seeing her father with her baby niece, Amelia, spurred her on further as she feared if she didn't report him, he could one day abuse her too.

'I knew in my head that something had to be done, I needed to go to the police,' she said.

Nicola first confided in her mother and then they called the police in June 2008. 

Twomey was found guilty of eight counts of indecent assault, five sexual assaults and two counts of rape on Nicola. He was also convicted of attempted indecent assault and indecent assault on Emma. He was given a total of 14 years and six months imprisonment in April 2009.

The sisters share their ordeal on Episode 4 of Britain's Darkest Taboos, Crime & Investigation Network on Wednesday, 30 October, 2013.

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