I’m proof that stepdads can be a huge risk to girls after mine raped me hundreds of times – and my mum knew and did nothing to stop him
AS a young girl Tina Renton would lie awake at night dreading the moment her bedroom door would creak open.
It signalled the arrival of her stepfather, a man who had moved into the family home when she was just five and would go on to sexually abuse her at least twice a week until she was 14.
It’s a horrifying betrayal of trust – yet according to chilling research Tina’s experience is far from an isolated one.
Worse, it was a direct consequence of her family dynamic, with more than a hundred studies worldwide suggesting that stepchildren are ten times more likely to suffer abuse or neglect than if they live with their natural parents.
A stepparent is 'biggest risk' of child abuse
It’s a controversial phenomenon known as ‘The Cinderella Effect’ – the term first coined by Canadian academic Professor Martin Daly and his late wife Margo Wilson.
In the 80s, they researched the deaths of 700 Canadian children and found a heightened risk factor in those raised by stepparents.
Now, as then, he accepts it’s a hard-to-stomach discovery.
"Some people may bristle at the suggestion that stepfathers are more hostile and dangerous than genetic fathers - but the fact is that having a stepparent is the most powerful risk factor for severe child maltreatment yet discovered," he says.
The Cinderella Effect is born out by statistics in the UK: a 2013 study by the Public Library of Science looked at cases where parents had killed children in England and Wales over a ten year period and found that almost a fifth were killed by a stepfather - more than twice the expected rate, given the number of stepfamilies in Britain at the time.
According to Kevin Hoffin, lecturer in criminology at Birmingham, City University, the phenomenon is well known among criminologists.
He says its roots lie in basic biology. "Primates, and particularly, great apes have been found to be more likely to kill the young of other males to ensure their own genes pass forward," he says.
"The implication is that these stepfathers who arrive in children’s lives don't have the same patriarchal attachment that birth parents do."
Deaths of Alex Malcolm, 5
It’s a difficult assessment to accept, particularly given that stepfamilies are a reality of modern life - 1.15 million children in the UK live in one.
Of those the majority are well loved and well cared for. Most children in these situations positively flourishing and are loved and cared for by their stepfathers.
But some news stories, however, illustrate the graphic reality when those circumstances go wrong:.
In January an inquest heard how five-year-old Alex Malcolm from Catford, South London, was punched to death by his mum's boyfriend, 39-year-old Marvyn Iheanacho, causing a fatal brain bleed.
The little boy’s crime? He lost a trainer on a trip to a park near his home. Iheanacho was jailed for life.
'Covered up - by my MUM'
For Tina Renton, meanwhile, the Cinderella effect was a daily reality for many years.
The now-43-year-old lawyer from Romford, Essex, battled chronic low self-esteem for years as a result of the sexual abuse she suffered from her step-father, lorry driver David Moore.
It only stopped when, aged 14, a school friend persuaded her to confide in a teacher.
"Until then, I thought it was my fault, that I’d get the blame and no one would believe me," she recalls.
"When I came home from school that afternoon and told my Mum, at first she comforted me and gave me a hug.
"But then she told me she wouldn’t be able to survive financially if she threw Moore out.
"Without him to help with the mortgage, she said we’d lose our home and my younger brother and I would be on the streets. I didn’t want to be responsible for making us homeless, so I felt I had no choice but to agree."
As a compromise, Tina’s mother offered to get a lock fitted on her bedroom door so Moore couldn't come in at night.
For Tina it was a shattering blow. "I realised then my mother wouldn’t come to my rescue and I was completely alone."
Even when Moore knew the secret was out, he said nothing to Tina. He even fitted the lock.
"That evening, I remember seeing him for the first after I’d told my mother. He just smirked at me," Tina says.
After that, the abuse stopped, but Tina spent as much time as she could in her room trying to avoid him. Her studies suffered, as she truanted from school.
"I finished secondary school with poor exam results. I took a job as a trainee hairdresser so I could earn enough money to get away and cut off all contact with my family from the age of 18," she recalls.
Paedophile stepdads 'gain trust of family first'
It’s a tragic story, and also textbook, according to Professor Kevin Browne, Director of the Centre for Forensic and Family Psychology at Nottingham University.
He warns that a small number of men are only too willing to exploit the emotional or financial needs or women as a way of working their way into the family home: in prison interviews with more than 100 paedophiles, one in five told researchers they would get access to a child by gaining the trust of the whole family first – and nearly half abused the child in the home while the mother was out.
"Single, separated and divorced mothers, especially those feeling a low sense of self-worth, need to be alert to the risks of being targeted by men with a dangerous interest in children," he says.
Shockingly, when a child’s abuse comes to light, about a quarter of mothers will continue to support their partners and blame the child – just like Tina’s.
"This may be because at least a third of women are physically and emotionally abused by their partner, at the same time their partner is sexually abusing her children," Professor Browne says.
"They may believe they cannot survive without their partner, and so they do not want to believe what their child is telling them."
Tina gets her justice at last
Tina, at least, got her happy ending: while the legacy of her abuse lingered for many years in the form of unhappy relationships, when she was left single the mum of two sons realised she needed to take her future into her own hands.
She trained as a counsellor then, aged 31, took out a student loan and enrolled for a law degree at Essex University, juggling her studies with caring for her boys.
It was during a lecture in her final year in 2009 that she learned there was no time limit on bringing charges against a sexual offender – and she could still make Moore pay for his crimes.
After moving away from the area where her family still lived, she rang the police to report the abuse.
In 2011, Moore was jailed for 14 years after he was found guilty of three counts of rape, three counts of gross indecency with a child and seven counts of indecent assault.
Shockingly, Tina’s mother – who was still living with Moore at the time of his arrest - denied everything, testifying against her daughter in court.
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Since then, Tina has written a book about her abuse, called You Can’t Hide and has also become an ambassador for the charity Embrace Child Victims of Crime supporting people who have been through similar experiences.
"When I speak to survivors, I generally hear stepfather abuse tends to be more severe sexually than father abuse. It’s as if there’s nothing holding them back," she says.
"I also hear from some women their mothers didn’t believe them or didn’t do anything about it."
Her sentiments are born out by research which suggests that while biological fathers also abuse children, stepfathers behave more severely and single out their stepchildren for more cruel treatment, compared to their own offspring.
None of this is easy to accept. And Professor Lisa Dodson, a chartered psychologist who specialises in the subject of stepfamilies, says it’s crucial society does not demonise all stepfathers when so many are doing a good job.
She points out that research by Utah State University shows that if a child has an engaged and loving stepfather, they get all the same benefits as they do from a birth father - from better marks at school to improved mental health.
"When you have society saying: 'It’s always the stepdad,' and that you can’t trust them, it makes it more difficult for them to form those bonds," she says.
*Name has been changed.