November 2018

Dad forced son, 11, to have sex with stepmum to ‘cure’ him of being gay

Daniel Dowling’s evil father tried to punch him when he refused depraved demands for sex acts and threesomes

A father forced his 11-year-old son to have sex with his stepmother in a twisted attempt to “cure” the child from being gay.

Young Daniel Dowling was made to watch porn and forced into threesomes.

And when he refused to perform a sex act on his stepmum his dad tried to punch him.

Daniel was robbed of a normal childhood – replaced by a sordid existence which right-minded people will find hard to fathom.

He has been haunted by his ordeal – even by the smell of his stepmum’s perfume – for more than 20 years.

But now he has now seen his tormentors jailed after turning detective to prove the guilt of his father, an ex-Ministry of Defence worker.

Warped Richard Dowling was jailed for five years and his ex-partner Annette Breakspear got eight. They are 62 now but were 38 when the abuse began.

Legal reasons prevented them being identified before today. But they can finally be exposed after Daniel, 36, bravely waived his anonymity.

He said: “It was Dad’s job to protect me. They stole my innocence and ruined my childhood. I can never get past that.”

Daniel will never forget the day the abuse began. It was a Sunday afternoon.

Dowling and Breakspear were playing board game Frustration with Daniel at home in Bracknell, Berks.

Fashion retail manager Daniel, who now lives in Surrey, recalls: “Dad told me we were going to try something different – to take our clothes off whenever someone lost. By the end of the game Annette was completely naked.

“They instructed me to touch and kiss her breasts. Dad was encouraging me to do it so I thought it was okay. I think that night was a tester of how I’d react because intercourse started after that.”

Daniel’s father had met former carer Breakspear through a lonely hearts ad after splitting from the lad’s mother.

During three years together Breakspear stole Daniel’s virginity and abused him more than 10 times.

Once, he was picked up by his dad from Scouts, taken home and told to “give Breakspear a goodnight kiss”.

Daniel said: “I went into their room and she was handcuffed to the bed naked.

“I gave her a kiss and went to leave but she asked me to touch her and to untie one of her hands. We had intercourse and Dad came and joined in.”

Another time, he was made to view porn before his dad had oral sex with Annette and said: “That’s how you do it.”

In another sickening incident Daniel was called in to find them naked and engaged in a sex act. Breakspear then had sex with Daniel.

He said: “We’d watch porn in bed together and then we’d have threesomes. She’d instruct me on what to do. Sometimes when Dad wasn’t there she’d ask me into her room for fondling and intercourse.

“I was an only child and I spent a lot of time playing Lego but she’d come in and ask me to do things to her.”

Daniel, who is gay but currently single, said: “I was sexualised at such a young age that sex means nothing to me now.

“The few positive memories of my childhood are tarnished by memories of the abuse. When I smell someone wearing her perfume, or see that board game in a shop or on TV, it brings the memories back.”

In a sickening attempt to explain his depravity in his trial at Reading Crown Court, Daniel’s father claimed he abused his son “to try and steer him in the right direction and not to go to the way of being gay, because there was like, sort of, tendencies for him to be gay”.

He added: “All I ever wanted was for him to turn out the right way.”

Daniel said: “Dad said that he did it to stop me being gay because I showed feminine traits as a child.

“One day we were at a car boot sale and my neighbour saw me wrestling an old lady for a handbag.

“She told my dad, ‘Your Dan’s going to bat for the other side’. And Dad said ‘No son of mine will be gay.’ I think the abuse started after that.”

It only stopped when Dowling and Breakspear split up around 1996. He claimed he broke up with her because she told him she’d had sex with Daniel and his grandad on the same day.

The teenager and his father moved to Weymouth, Dorset.

But Daniel, then 16, was targeted by another paedophile.

Police raided the pervert’s home and found naked pictures of Daniel.

It was then, as he was being interviewed by a child psychologist, that Daniel revealed the years of abuse from his dad and stepmum.

Dowling was quizzed but claimed his son was an “attention seeking” liar. Daniel believes Breakspear was not questioned and there were no arrests.

The despairing youngster later tried to kill himself. When the case finally came to trial in May this year it was claimed police treated him “shoddily” at his 1998 video interview – and that one constable even mocked him.

Daniel says it was left to him, some 17 years later, to finally get justice. On September 6, 2015, he secretly recorded a phone conversation in which his father admitted the abuse.

Two days later Daniel walked into Staines police station, Surrey, with the recording – and he said that this time the police took him seriously.

He said: “I don’t know if training has improved or if I was just unlucky the first time, but I would definitely encourage other victims of historic abuse to come forward and report it now.”

Daniel’s dad admitted to police that he and Breakspear carried out “sordid and deplorable” abuse and that he felt ashamed and disgusted.

In court he claimed the abuse was to prevent Daniel “turning gay”, to “protect him from paedophiles so he would know what was right and wrong” – and to educate him about how he should treat women.

He blamed his actions on “undiagnosed depression” and said he fell under the influence of Breakspear – who he labelled “a Jekyll and Hyde character”.

Breakspear was found guilty of three counts of indecent assault.

Dowling admitted one count of cruelty to a child and two counts relating to sexual offences involving a child. He was found not guilty of one count of indecent assault.

Judge Maria Lamb told Dowling: “Your warped sense of right and wrong allowed him to be exploited by your then partner not just once but again and again. You’ve failed to protect him from the sexually predatory behaviour of your co-defendant.

“The damage is incalculable. The abuse of trust is monstrous and the reality is that one of you was involved in active sexual abuse and the other connived at it.”

The judge told Breakspear: “For your own perverted sexual gratification you initiated this boy into a world far beyond anything to which he should ever have had to be introduced at those tender years.”

Daniel, who has not spoken to his father for over two years, said: “Dad threw me under the bus instead of admit his guilt. He is dead to me now.”