An abuse of trust

IT WAS when little Hannah Wolff's behaviour changed that her parents Danny and Susan began to become suspicious. She'd always been a happy, helpful little girl. Suddenly, she became spiteful: accusing her mum of being a 'no-good mother' and telling her she hated her.

Danny and Susan noticed that the bad behaviour became worse after visits to Hannah's granddad - Danny's father.

One day, while Danny was at work, Susan drew her daughter aside for a chat. "I asked, 'Is granddad doing anything?'" Susan recalled, her hands twisting with emotion at the memory. "I asked her if he was hurting her, and she said no. And then she said: 'Sometimes he is a bit, when we play those games'."

It was, for Susan, one of those deeply shocking moments no parent can ever forget. She had no idea what to do next.

The 'games', it turned out later, involved the then five-year-old Hannah tweaking her grandfather's nipples - and him 'pinching her tuppence'.

"I can remember saying to Hannah that granddad had done a wrong thing," Susan said. "I said that she shouldn't have let him do that. I've regretted it ever since. As though she could stop him."

Danny's first reaction was one of overwhelming anger. But for both parents there was guilt, too: because there had been earlier signs that all was not right, if only they had been able to spot them.

A few years earlier, Hannah had talked about seeing her granddad's 'willie' while on a family holiday. But the family had never been prudish about nudity, Danny, a nurse, explained. Susan, a teacher, added: "We assumed she had maybe just walked in on him."

Even worse, there had been still earlier allegations from Danny's brother that his daughter, Hannah's older cousin, had been abused by Danny's father. Danny and Susan refused to believe it, and Danny and his brother fell out.

Now, though, everything began to make sense.

Danny telephoned his father, who lived on the other side of the Pennines, to arrange to talk to him without saying what it was about.

"It was actually one of the most frightening things I've ever done," he said. "He's a formidable man, a respected man. Everybody thinks he's a very upright person. Nobody would dream that he could be capable of anything sinister like this."

But his father's manner when he met him at the station, Danny recalled, was all wrong: hostile and aggressive. He immediately denied the allegations and began, says Danny, to use every emotional trick in the book to persuade his son he'd done nothing wrong.

"He started quite aggressively, then he became the helpless granddad," Danny said. "Then it was: 'But I love Hannah,' and there was a little tear in his eye."

Even Danny's mother joined in the emotional blackmail. "She said: 'I've been married to him for 40 years, and I know he hasn't done it'," Danny said. "She said: 'Are you hungry, Danny? Get your coat off and have something to eat'."

The pressure to drop the allegations didn't end there. As Danny and Susan wrestled with the decision about whether or not to make formal statements to the police, Danny's father tried to kill himself. He collapsed in the garage after taking a bottle of pills and was rushed to hospital, Danny says.

"My sister rang me up and said 'You can't go to the police now. He's a broken man. He's gibbering,'" he recalled.

But Danny and Susan held firm: and a court decided that, after all, Danny's father was guilty. Earlier this year, he was convicted on two counts of indecent assault - one against Hannah and one against her cousin - sentenced to two years probation, and put on the sex offenders' register.

For Danny, it was devastating. Everything he'd ever believed in was cut away from beneath him. "It was like a funeral," he said. "Except I wasn't just an orphan. It was like I never really had parents."

The most dreadful aspect of Danny and Hannah's story is that it is so typical of cases of child abuse. Generations of children have been told that they shouldn't talk to strangers: but all too often it is loved and trusted family members or family friends who are the abusers.

David Radford, the NSPCC's children services manager for York and North Yorkshire, said: "Traditionally, stranger danger is what is taught to children. But increasingly, we're coming to understand that those who abuse children are those who can either take steps to get close to them or people that they know very well, such as family members."

What happened to Hannah has left Danny's whole family traumatised. Danny himself is unable to work because of stress. Hannah feels guilty and upset about getting the grandfather she still loves into trouble, and Danny's sister, who still supports her father, is no longer talking to any of them.

Hannah in particular can't understand, Danny says, why her aunt and grandparents never come to see her. She was devastated, he says, when she didn't get a birthday present from her 'rich aunt and uncle'.

"She kept saying 'That's why it hasn't come, because it is too big to get through the letterbox,'" he said. "In the end we had to tell her. She was visibly shocked and upset."

Thanks to the help of the NSPCC in York, who arranged therapy sessions for Hannah with child protection officer Andrew Hill, she seems to be coping well with what happened. "At the moment, she just seems a normal eight-year-old girl," said Susan. "She never tells me she hates me any more."

But both Susan and Danny are still worried about what the future holds for Hannah. They've arranged for her to be assessed by a clinical psychologist.

Danny is worried the fact his father wasn't sent to prison may give Hannah the wrong message. "Is she going to think he didn't go to prison because he didn't really do anything wrong?" he asked. "And will she think that means she did something wrong herself?"

"She won't always be an eight-year-old," Susan adds: and you can see the shadow of future pain in her eyes. "What about when she's 15 and begins to understand what he did?"

What indeed.

The names of the family in this article have been changed to protect the identity of those involved.

If you're concerned a child may be at risk, you can call the NSPCC helpline, in confidence, on 0808 800 5000.