A Wiltshire woman has revealed how her step-dad’s sexual abuse made ‘home like a prison’ during her teenage years.
In a victim personal statement shared in court, Chloe Songhurst spoke out about how Keir Guidotti, 41, left her struggling to stay alive.
Following a trial at Winchester Crown Court, where jurors found him guilty, he was jailed for 40 months for 13 sexual assaults – when the victim was aged 17 to 19.
Guidotti repeatedly touched Chloe’s body after becoming obsessed with her. He forced her to call him dad, bought underwear for her and constantly confessed his love.
Chloe, now 22, also claims that her mother was informed about the abuse – but failed to act, telling her to allow it to continue in order to keep the peace in the household.
In a victim personal statement, she said: “I spent years feeling so disgusted in my own skin.
“I spent so many hours alone, coming up with all these excuses in my head for why Keir was doing the things he was doing to me and treating me the way that he did. Why did no one believe me when I spoke up.
“I was afraid of waking up everyday because I never knew what was going to happen to me.
“I became a shell of myself and it felt like I was just existing for the sake of a man that I was terrified of. A man who took any sense of security that I should have had. My home became a prison.
“I lost years of freedom and happiness. I lost my dignity and privacy. I was ashamed of my body and I was embarrassed of who I was. I didn’t want to live anymore.
“I still live with the scars all over my body and the memories of being in a hospital bed after I almost Iost my life [following a suicide attempt].
“I truly believe that if he hadn’t been doing what he was, I would never put myself through that. He was the cause for my state of mind and still live, everyday, with the trauma of feeling his hands over me. I don’t know if I will ever be able to shake that feeling.”
Chloe continued: “I always saw my story as ending in one way, dead before I was ever able to live my life. I longed for that.
“I went to bed praying that I would die in my sleep so that I didn’t have to wake up and see another day. Didn’t have to see him again. Didn’t have to be touched again. Didn’t have to spend another waking moment being called a liar and fantasist, just a problem child that was lashing out and making up stories.
“That is probably one the things that hurts the most, that I wasn’t believe and I wasn’t protected and I was allowed to continue to live in his web of deception. I prayed that someone would notice, that someone would see beyond his lies, and that they would help me.
Going though this process, feeling like I was finally being believe, it has changed my whole life. I no longer go to bed, wishing that it will be my last.
“Now I wake up in the morning and I am grateful to be alive, to be loved, to be a person in my own right without being forced to fit or change to someone else’s will. It has made me think about what the word family means.
“Now, to me, family means protection. That you can feel safe, that you don’t have to change your personality or the way you act, just to protect yourself.
“Now I have a child myself, it makes me question it even more. They will always come first and I will make sure that they will never feel as I have been made to feel.
“Once this is over, I want to make it clear that I will no longer allowed Keir or what happened to me, to define me.
“I will move on. I will raise my family and he will not even be a footnote. Just like these scars on my arms, they will always be there, but they will fade in the sunshine until they are barely visible. Just the ghost of who I use to be.”
Chloe waived her legal right to lifelong anonymity in the hope that her story encourages others who are suffering abuse to speak up, and report it to the police.
