Woman’s Child Had To Be Exhumed To Prove She Was Raped By Brother, Stepfather

A mother-of-six in the U.K. has finally spoken up about the trauma she faced after being sexually abused as a child by her brother and stepfather.

Maureen Wood, now 50, of Penkhull, recently revealed her identity and penned a book "A Family Secret: My Shocking True Story of Surviving a Childhood in Hell," to help other rape survivors, media outlet Stoke-on-Trent Live reported.

Wood told the outlet in heart-breaking detail about how she was first raped by her brother when she was nine, then by her stepfather. Soon, her mother joined the abuses by "preparing her" to get raped. She became pregnant at the age of 13 and gave birth to a baby boy, who unfortunately died in three weeks.

Wood finally took legal action against her abusers in 2009 and her dead child had to be exhumed for a DNA test and reburied a month later. The test proved her brother John Donnelly was the father.

The second youngest of six children, Wood's nightmare began when she was taken out of the care system, in which she was placed following her parents' separation, in Glasgow by her mother after she remarried.

“My brother was the initial abuser," Wood said. "It started with touching and got worse. I was told that if I said anything to anybody I would be taken back into care.”

Then, on her ninth birthday, Wood was raped by her brother, 14-year-old John. “I cried throughout the whole ordeal,” she told Stoke-on-Trent Live.

“Then about three or four weeks later it happened again. My stepfather John Wood walked in and caught him. He asked what the hell was going on. I was scared, embarrassed, ashamed, but there was also massive relief because I thought that would be the end of it all. I thought it would stop but it didn’t and it got worse. My stepfather then started to rape me from the age of about nine-and-a-half," she said.

Her mother found out a year later, only to join the adults in the abuse.

“She became involved in what my stepfather was doing,” said Wood. “She would prepare me for him to rape me. That went on, with the three of them abusing me, until I got pregnant at 13.”

However, her son Christopher died three weeks later.

"I loved him unconditionally and the day he died was the worst day of my life. I'd just turned 14, my birthday was 10 days after he was born," said Wood.

Though her brother and mother stopped the abuses after the baby's death, her stepfather did not.

Even though Wood moved out of the home at 16, she continued to have nightmares until she went to the police in 2009. “The minute I went to the police, all my fear was lifted," Wood said.

“Throughout the whole court process, the only way the CPS would take the case to court was if the Home Office would approve an exhumation of Christopher for his DNA," she added.

The DNA test helped prove her case.

Finally, in 2011, the Stoke-on-Trent Crown Court sentenced her 68-year-old stepdad to 16 years in prison. Her brother, then 46, received two years in jail after admitting rape, incest and indecent assault. In a re-trial, Maureen Wood (the victim's mother), then 65, was found guilty of four counts of aiding and abetting the rape of a girl under 16. She was jailed for nine years and died in prison.

“I filed the case not for money, but to prevent this from happening to other children,” Wood added, London News Times reported.