SITTING down to play a family board game at the age of 11, Daniel Dowling had no idea his stepmum, Annette Breakspear, was going to turn it into a sex game and make him fondle her breasts.
It was the start of a sick catalogue of sexual abuse which saw him lose his virginity to his dad’s wife – and forced into having threesomes with them.
Over the next three years Daniel, now 36, was even forced to watch porn – and was attacked by his dad when he refused to perform oral sex on Annette.
Two decades later in 2015, Daniel, who features on 5Star’s new documentary, My Mother The Monster, tonight, took matters into his own hands when he recorded a conversation with his dad, in which he confessed to the abuse.
Last year Annette and Richard, both 62, were found guilty of child sex abuse and jailed for eight and five years respectively.
Sickeningly, Dowling Snr claimed he had been trying to prevent his son becoming a homosexual by showing him the “right way.”
Talking exclusively to the Sun Online, Daniel says his dad was “groomed” by Annette – who split with Richard after three years – but says he still blames both for the abuse.
“He is responsible for his own actions so I can’t say it was entirely her. I have tried to forgive and forget but our relationship has been strained and we stopped talking after I went to the police.”
Daniel’s parents divorced when he was six, and, for reasons unknown to him, Richard was awarded custody.
But five years later, after Annette moved in, she stripped naked during the game and insisted Daniel fondle and kiss her breasts.
“If I look back on it now I think it was a test to see how I would react to the situation and what they could get away with,” says Daniel.
“From then on I was told to do things and she would do things to me. Both my dad and I would have had intercourse with her in a threesome type of situation – but I was only 11.
“Sometimes it was just me and Annette and there were a handful of times when it was me, dad and Annette in a threesome.
“One time I remember lying on the bed and they put a porn film on too.
“At the time I thought that was what happened in houses, behind closed doors.”
As the abuse continued, Daniel tried to avoid being in the house and tried to tell neighbours what was happening.
“I had been alone with dad from six, and there was some loyalty there,” he says. “Also I tried to tell couple of people what was going on but they didn’t believe me so I stopped.”
As he struggled to cope, Daniel was left suicidal and suffering from an eating disorder in his mid-teens.
“I used to not eat and hide food and my dad would find mouldy food hidden in my bedroom,” he says. “It was the only way I could take back some control.”
After the couple split, Richard and his son moved to Weymouth in Surrey but Daniel, then 14, fell victim to another abuser who was not a family member.
“I was confused with my sexuality and because I had been manipulated by my dad and stepmum I think it made me an easy target,” he says. “[The other man] exploited my sexuality and made me do things that I wouldn’t have done.”
At 16, Daniel decided to go to the police and report his dad and stepmum but, when Richard branded him a liar and no further action was taken, Daniel tried to take his own life.
His treatment by police, he claims, put him off reporting the pair for 22 years when.
Then, persuaded by a friend, he rang his dad and taped a confession.
In the recorded call, played on the programme, Richard is heard claiming the abuse was a “dark period” in his life and telling Daniel, “I can’t change what happened in the past. I wish to f*** I could.”
The recording led to the arrest and trial of the pair, and Daniel says it has brought him “closure” after decades of mental health issues.
“I’ve had an eating disorder, depression and anxiety. I don’t speak to anyone on dad’s side and when my granddad passed away none of my family told me. I’ve suffered emotional breakdowns.
“I got into some very messy relationships and I find it hard to trust anybody. I don’t have a sex drive anymore so it has affected me.
“But now I have had closure I feel I might have the ability to find a relationship that would benefit me.
“People are surprised but I always say that everything I have been through – even though I wouldn’t wish it on anyone else – has made me stronger. If it hadn’t happened I wouldn’t be the person I am today. And I like this person.”
The show also features Katrina Dore, 34, who suffered 11 years of mental and physical abuse at the hands of her mum, Susan Speed.
The Oldham mum was punched, kicked and slashed with knives from the age of five after Susan flew into drunken rages and lashed out at Katrina.
She tells the Sun Online: “My mum never showed me any love but she wasn’t aggressive and violent until she started drinking. Then she just flipped. It was like she had a different personality.
“She punched me, kicked me, slapped me, attacked me with knives and bit me,” she said.
As soon as her mum kicked off Katrina would run to their bedrooms and barricade herself in, using a dressing table to bar the door.
When Katrina was 11, her mum barged in while she was having a bath and insisted on washing her hair. Instead she forced her daughter’s head under the water.
“I couldn’t breathe, I was lashing around and trying to get her off me and I had to almost bite through her hand to get her off me.
“I was screaming, I grabbed a towel and ran into the bedroom I was so scared. That was the first time I honestly thought she was going to kill me.
“The worst attack was where she wrapped the telephone wire around my neck and tried to strangle me.
“I remember slipping in and out of consciousness and when I came round she’d gone.
“She used to say she had given me life and she could just as easily take it away.”
At 16, Katrina packed three binliners of clothing and ran away from home and a year later she had got her own flat.
Soon afterwards she met Kieran, now her husband, and they are now parents to 11-year-old Madison.
But Katrina admits her mum’s legacy frightened her in the days after her daughter’s birth.
“I felt this overwhelming rush of love and need to protect, I would kill or die for her, so I couldn’t understand how my mum could have done those things to me,” she says.
“But when she was six weeks old I packed my bag to leave because I was adamant I was going to hurt her. I was worried I would turn into my mum.
“I was diagnosed with Post Natal Depression and I had to go to counselling but i would never hurt her.”
Despite the constant abuse, Katrina’s dad stayed with his wife until the girls left.
“He later told me it was the 80s and 90s and if he’d taken us Mum would call the the police and accuse him of kidnap and then who would protect us?”
Years after leaving home, Katrina received news her mother had had a stroke and rushed to her side, begging her to confess to what she had done but she branded her daughter a “liar and fantasist.”
Finally Katrina went to the police.
In November 2017, at Manchester’s Minshull Street Crown Court, Speed pleaded guilty to charges of cruelty but, because of ill health, was sentenced to a two year suspended sentence.
Sadly, Katrina’s dad died of a heart attack in November last year and the postmortem recorded 300 scars on his body, including a nine inch knife scar.
“She broke that man,” says Katrina. “I am angry because my dad is dead now and all I have is his ashes and she’s alive, claiming benefits and the tax payer is paying for her hospital treatments.
“She should be in prison. She’s a monster and monsters belong behind bars.”
My Mother the Monster, this evening at 9pm on 5STAR
