Couple jailed after forcing their 11-year-old son to have sex with them to prove he wasn’t gay
The victim - now in his 30s - originally reported it to the police in 1998
By Steve Brown
A couple have been jailed after forcing their 11-year-old son to have sex with them to prove he wasn’t gay.
The sick couple, who have not been named for legal reasons, made the young lad – who is now in his 30s – carry out sexual acts to keep him ‘on the straight and narrow’, the court heard.
His father, who coerced him to have sex with his stepmother, has been jailed for six years and she had been handed a nine year jail sentence.
During the trial, Judge Maria Lamb heard that the victim told the police what was happening but his father lied to detectives and he wasn’t believed to which the judge described as a “betrayal of your son”.
In 1998, the victim complained again to the police and his father and stepmother were both arrested and charged with a number of sex offences.
Prosecutor Ruby Silva told the Reading Crown Court how the couple had begun a routine of humiliating sexual assaults from when the boy was aged 11 years, the Mirror Online reported.
Silva also read the father’s initial interview with police and cited the abuse was “to keep him on the straight and narrow path” following their fear of their son being gay.
The father – who was convicted of charges of child cruelty and indecent acts with a child – had allowed his then girlfriend to involve his son in regular sexual acts as a part of an “ill-founded sex education”.
She was charged with child cruelty, indecent assault and indecent acts with a child.
Judge Lamb said: “This was a child who had been neglected by his mother and was particularly vulnerable.
“You have both argued that this whole trial process has weighed heavily on the both of you. This will provide you absolutely no mitigation.
“This was your own warped sense of right and wrong. The damage that you two have done is unacceptable.
“For you own personal sexual gratification, you performed sexual acts on a boy who considered you his mother.
“This was your warped sense of right and wrong.”
After the hearing, the victim said: “It’s been a long process, and I tried before. I tried when I was 16 and obviously I was made out to be a liar.
“A lot of people will ask, ‘Why now?’. But it took me that long to convince myself that I had the courage to go through it all again.
“If my story can reach just one other person, I will be perfectly happy with that.”
As the Indenpendent Inquiry into Childhood Sex Abuse (IICSA) continues, the Truth Project is offering survivors a safe space in which to tell their stories and one gay survivor of child abuse told Attitude his harrowing story.