Tressa Middleton, now 21, gave birth when she was only 12 years old after her older sibling sexually abused her.
Struggling to cope with becoming a mum at such a young age, she became addicted to drugs and alcohol and her daughter Annie was taken into care.
Now in her twenties, she opened up on This Morning about her harrowing ordeal and says she hopes her daughter can forgive her.
Tressa, who spent much of her childhood in care, said: "I just hope one day she does forgive me.
"I know it’s going to be hard for her when she finds out her uncle is actually her dad."
"I hope she doesn’t blame me for not telling people what actually happened when it happened and for drinking and going off the rails.
"I hope she understands. I’ll leave it up to her but I hope she does forgive me."
Tressa, from Broxburn, Scotland, who has since turned her life around, appeared on ITV to tell her tragic tale.
Speaking of her early childhood memories, she said: "My mum was homeless and I had to go into care.
"I remember one day my foster carers arranged a birthday party for me at McDonald's and let me see my brother Jason.
"He was a bit older than me but it was really good seeing him,'
"After a year of care I returned home in Edinburgh. My mum was trying to get Jason back – and then he did come back to live with us when we moved to Arndale."
At the age of just nine, she got in with an older crowd and started drinking and hang in out on the street.
She said: "I was like a 20-year-old even though I was only nine.
"All my friends were older than me. I also started to drink at eight or nine.
"It got too much and I was taken back into care because of my drinking."
But in 2005 her life hit rock bottom when her own brother, who was 16 at the time, raped her.
"When I was 11 that was the time I fell pregnant. I trusted him," she said.
Her older sibling took her to a building site where he attacked her.
"We used to go there to play on our bikes. One minute he was absolutely fine and the next everything is different," she said.
A few months later her body started to change and her friend suggested that she could be with-child.
She said: "She got me aside one day and said, 'You might be pregnant' but I tried deny it.
"'She said we better check so we got her dad to get us a pregnancy test. The next morning I did a test and it came up that I was pregnant.
"I never thought about terminating. I didn’t believe in abortion even at that age.
"Me and my friend went over to my mum's house and asked her if she could tell her, but my auntie was there.
"My friend told my auntie, that I was pregnant and my auntie said I better hide. My mum was in the bath but she ran out after me in her towel into the street."
But it was only after little Annie was born that she plucked up the courage to identify who the dad was.
Tressa said: "I was at my mum’s house and half an hour later Jason arrived. He came up after me and was really drunk.
"He said 'I love you' and I said 'love you too'. Then he said: 'No, I really love you – as a girlfriend'.
'And I said: 'No this can’t happen'. He was the only person who knew the baby was his.
"Later I was really drunk and I was at my friend's house and I just broke down and told her that Jason was Annie’s dad. She thought I was lying at first."
Her brother Jason was then reported to the police in 2009 and after DNA tests proved he was her baby’s father he was jailed for four years.
He has since been released from jail.
But Tressa hopes that telling her story will help others in similar situations speak out.
She said: "If anything like this happens – you must speak out.
"I wish I had someone to confide in when I was younger.
"I didn’t want my family to be split up, which was the main reason I didn’t tell anyone."
The brave young woman has also written about her experiences in a new book, Tressa: The 12-Year-Old Mum, which she said she has dedicated to her daughter.
Philip Schofield read out a moving dedication to her long-lost daughter on the ITV programme.
It read: "You are never far from my thoughts. You are the last person I think of when I go to sleep and the first person I think of when I wake up in the morning.
"You are the beating pulse of life. In the cupboard I still keep your clothes from when you were a wee baby.
"For now I want you to know I love you and I always will."
No comments:
Post a Comment