Carol Higgins was 15 when she first reported her father’s abuse to the police. They told her he wouldn’t be charged. But she refused to let it rest until he finally stood trial
hen Carol Higgins was 15, she walked into Penistone police station in South Yorkshire with her mother to report that her father, Elliott Appleyard, had been raping her several times a week for the previous two years. She might not have used the word “rape”, because she wasn’t sure that was what it was. “I was upset, confused, petrified. I didn’t realise it was criminal because I thought he loved me,” she says. “I felt like I was to blame because I hadn’t kicked and screamed.
This happened in 1984. Decades later, in 2005, Higgins tried again, phoning West Yorkshire police to report historical sexual abuse, and then again in 2012. In 2013 and 2014, she instructed two sets of solicitors to write to the police on her behalf, and in 2014 she also walked into Normanton police station in West Yorkshire, waited five hours, then gave another police interview.
Social services visited again and awarded Appleyard custody – and also warned Higgins that she would end up in a children’s home if she kept changing her mind. In the months that followed, Appleyard would slip her mother’s engagement ring on Higgins’s finger, get her back tattooed and convince her that it was normal to live as a married couple. In 1984, when she was 15, she ran away for good, taking nothing but her bus fare. She found her mum, who persuaded her to speak to the police.
At 22, Higgins married and went on to have two children. The marriage lasted 10 years. “Neither of us knew what love was,” she says, “and I didn’t know what a normal family was.” When her children were young, she went on a 12-week parenting course to learn how to parent, and volunteered at her daughter’s school to see what childhood was meant to be like.
At the trial, Higgins chose to give her evidence in person. “I was asked if I wanted a screen, or to give evidence by video link,” says Higgins. “No. I wanted to be stood in front of him and show I’m not scared of him any more.” There was a moment outside the court room when she saw Appleyard – by then 71 – sitting, waiting to go in. “He looked with these evil eyes just staring at me,” she says. “I looked back. I felt: ‘This is war now.’ He turned away first.
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