To the outside world Keith Meadows was a saintly family man.
A Salvation Army member and special constable, he also managed to raise three girls and look after a wife with mental health issues.
Paul CousansMandy Yousaf has bravely told her story in a new book[/caption]
Mandy was just 11 when her dad started abusing herPaul Cousans
Keith Meadows volunteered with the Salvation ArmyMirrorpix
But behind closed doors the picture perfect dad was abusing his daughter – and sickeningly went on to have two children with her.
Twisted Meadows used his power to ensure his terrified child Mandy Yousaf would keep his sick secret.
He told her he was so important as a volunteer cop that he was helping to hunt down the Yorkshire Ripper, and even took Mandy to a murder scene.
Meadows, now 80, of Halifax, was jailed just three years for incest in 1991 after DNA tests proved he was his grandchildrens’ father.
Now Mandy, 58, has found the courage to share her story in a new book to raise funds for the NSPCC and inspire other victims to escape their abusers.
Mandy said: “I’m a survivor and I want other people to realise there is a way out, that you can escape and that better times can lie ahead.
“The day my father dies I will dance.”
Mandy was just 11 when the horrific abuse started.
Meadows raped her on alternate nights for 12 years – even after the family had sat down to watch the religious programme Songs of Praise.
The first time was when her mum Jenny was in hospital having her baby sister.
Mandy said: “I have no memories of before that night. Other people have memories of little Mandy but I don’t.
“There are pictures of me in a netball team and I can’t ever remember playing in one.
“I’ve not only blocked out the memories of the abuse but my younger days too.
“That man robbed me of my whole childhood.
“Dad was a real pillar of the community. He was a Salvation Army officer who played the trumpet, a member of the local bowling club, kind to all the neighbours.
“Mum had a lot of alcohol and mental health issues and dad was there, looking after her. To everyone else he was a fantastic family man but I knew what he was really doing.”
Perverted Meadows told Mandy that he loved her and they would one day get married.
She said: “He’d tell us we were going to be wed and I’d think ‘what are you talking about? You’re married to my mum’.
“He was living in some sort of sick fantasy land but outside the house people worshipped the ground he walked on.”
Ripper cop lies
Mandy was 13 when her dad joined the special constabulary and he claimed to be working on the Yorkshire Ripper serial murder case.
He took Mandy to the playing field where Peter Sutcliffe brutally murdered Josephine Whitaker, 19, in April 1979 and claimed he was working forensics on the case.
She said: “He drove me up to the site in the family car and pointed at the police officers saying he’d been working with them on forensics to find the Ripper.
“Of course it was all rubbish. He never even got out the car.
“In reality he was manning concerts and low-level stuff like that, but I was a young girl and didn’t realise. He was my dad and I believed what he said.
“Being a special constable made him even scarier in my eyes, he was the police and if I told anyone about the abuse I thought I’d be in trouble. “
Mandy says Meadows, who spent two years in the force, would stop her from socialising with school friends and, even when she was allowed out, he would follow her.
“Everything was about control,” writes Mandy in her book.
I’d shop with my friends for an hour but he was always waiting
Mandy Yousaf
“If I ever went shopping he had to come with me. He’d drop me off and wait for me, or on the rare occasions when I was allowed to meet friends, it would be for an hour at the shopping centre.
“We might go to a cafe, we might have a look around the record shops, look at the latest fashions in Tammy Girl, but Dad would always be in the car and I knew the clock was ticking.
“Being with friends was my only chance to be an ordinary teenager. Any time I bought a record or some jeans there was a flash of ‘this is what other girls do’, but then I’d see him in the back of the car, just waiting when the hour was up and I was back into that world.”
Mandy as a little girlPaul Cousans
Paul CousansAs a teenager, Meadows barely let Mandy out of his sight[/caption]
By the time Mandy was 17, Meadows, who later got a job as a caretaker at an all-girls school, was in full control of his daughter – and became even more immersed in his dark fantasies.
She said: “He’d tell me I was beautiful, promising we’d run off together.
“I’d just brush it off – I didn’t want to indulge in his deluded fantasies but there was a part of me that thought, as I was getting older, would he actually do something about it?
“Would he force me to leave with him, to make a life with him.”
Cautioned by cops
When Mandy was 19 she confided in a friend that she was being abused and social services were called but she was too frightened to go through with the complaint and withdrew it.
Astonishingly, she was cautioned for wasting police time.
A year later she fell pregnant.
When her mum asked who the baby belonged to she lied that she had slept with a local boy.
On her 21st birthday, Mandy gave birth to a little boy with developmental difficulties who she called Ben but she was left fuming when Meadows was the first person to touch the baby.
How you can get help
Women’s Aid has this advice for victims and their families:
Always keep your phone nearby.
Get in touch with charities for help, including the Women’s Aid live chat helpline and services such as SupportLine.
If you are in danger, call 999.
Familiarise yourself with the Silent Solution, reporting abuse without speaking down the phone, instead dialing “55”.
Always keep some money on you, including change for a pay phone or bus fare.
If you suspect your partner is about to attack you, try to go to a lower-risk area of the house – for example, where there is a way out and access to a telephone.
Avoid the kitchen and garage, where there are likely to be knives or other weapons. Avoid rooms where you might become trapped, such as the bathroom, or where you might be shut into a cupboard or other small space.
If you are a victim of domestic abuse, SupportLine is open Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday from 6pm to 8pm on 01708 765200. The charity’s email support service is open weekdays and weekends during the crisis – messageinfo@supportline.org.uk.
Women’s Aid provides a live chat service – available weekdays from 8am-6pm and weekends 10am-6pm.
You can also call the freephone 24-hour National Domestic Abuse Helpline on 0808 2000 247.
Mandy said: “I can’t remember where mum was but my father was there, in the hospital, watching his own child being born to his daughter.
“When the midwife handed him to his ‘granddad’ I thought ‘get off my baby, get your hands off him, he’s mine’.”
Sly Meadows looked down at Ben and said: ‘Oh look, son. You’re in the world now son.’
Troubled bond
Unsurprisingly, Mandy found it hard to bond with her child.
“It was as if I was holding someone else’s baby,” she says. “In a way I’m glad that Ben didn’t end up speaking for years so he never called my father dad.
“I felt sorry for Ben because we didn’t have the kind of maternal bond we should have had. I feel so guilty about that now but I think that other women who have had children conceived through rape probably feel the same.
“It’s not the child’s fault but it’s a lot to take in.”
Paul CousansMandy cannot remember whole sections of her childhood[/caption]
MirrorpixMeadows would follow Mandy whenever she left the house[/caption]
Within two weeks of Ben’s birth, Meadows began raping his daughter again.
On a rare occasion Mandy left the house to have coffee with her sister, she met her future husband Pete Yousaf, who was three years older.
They met in secret and Mandy quickly fell in love.
Within a few months, Pete asked her if she was being abused and begged her to leave the family home but, terrified of her dad, Mandy was too scared. The pressure saw them split up after a nasty row.
I watched dad play with my son and couldn’t stand it
Mandy Yousaf
In 1989 Mandy fell pregnant to her dad again. She says she found it easier to bond with her second little boy, who she calls Calvin in her book, because she was the first to touch him after labour.
But it still took time after she failed to feel a “maternal rush”
She says: “Calvin somehow felt pure because I had been the first to hold him but when I got home mum and dad would tell me I was a useless mother. They took over everything and didn’t give me an opportunity to be a proper mum.”
Breaking the cycle
Ben’s genetic problems meant Mandy was assigned a social worker called Carol.
When Ben was two Mandy and her dad attended a meeting about Ben’s progress.
Watching her toddler behind a glass screen lying next to her father, Mandy finally snapped and told Carol about the years of abuse.
She said: “It was an appointment to assess Ben’s progress. Carol and I were watching through a one sided window as my father played with him on the other side.
“Ben was on a blue mat with my dad rolling him about and was just in his nappy. Dad touched his skin and that was it. I told Carol who Ben’s real dad was.”
Sick Meadows told his daughter they would ‘marry’Paul Cousans
Paul CousansMandy eventually found love with Pete[/caption]
Police were called and DNA tests taken but Ben was allowed to stay with Meadows and his wife until the results came through and her baby was put into temporary foster care.
It would be months before Mandy got either of her children back.
By that time Pete had come back into her life.
Meadows finally faced justice when he was jailed but served just 18 months of a three year sentence and later carried on volunteering for the Salvation Army until he was exposed in a newspaper.
Mandy said: “Eighteen months was nothing for what he put me through.”
She will never forget the day she had to explain to Calvin that he was the product of incest.
She said: “He was about 12 when I told him what happened. I just sat him down and told him how I’d been abused by his granddad but that he and Ben were mine and would always be mine.
“On some level I think he knew because he knew that Ben had developmental issues.”
Big family
Mandy and Pete went on to have eight children of their own and Mandy says her family has helped heal her heart.
She said: “Pete has been incredible and stayed by my side all these years. He knew what had happened with dad but still said he loved me unconditionally.
“Some people might look down on us because we have such a big family, but I always knew I wanted lots of children.
“I wanted to give them the childhood I never had and I hope I have. Of course, there were moments when it was hard when they were growing up because I was over protective of them at times, but best of all Pete and I have broken the generational cycle of abuse.
“I might have been abused but I have moved on with my life and I’ve found some peace.”
Please Save Me: One woman’s battle for love and hope after horrific abuse by her father by Mandy Yousaf with Linda Watson Brown is published by John Blake, an imprint of Bonnier Books UK
If you are affected by any of the issues raised in this article, please call the Samaritans for free on 116123.