EXTRA: Daughter’s DNA helps convict her father of rape — 46 years after
Carvel Bennett, a 74-year-old man, has been convicted by a Birmingham Crown Court, England, of raping a 13-year-old girl.
Bennett was handed an 11-year-jail term on Tuesday for the crime he committed 46 years ago.
Police opened an investigation into the case after Daisy, who was conceived through the incident, pressed charges against him.
Daisy, now 45, decided to seek justice for her mother after DNA tests confirmed that Bennett was her biological father.
She had asked the police to use her DNA to pursue a “victimless prosecution”, without the need for her mother to give evidence.
She was, however, told by police that she was not the victim and so could not press charges against him.
Bennett was subsequently charged after Daisy’s mother agreed to give a statement to the police.
Daisy’s mother told the court she was 13 when Bennett sexually assaulted her while she was babysitting his children.
Bennett did not deny having sex with Daisy’s mother, but said he thought she was aged 16 at that time and he had her consent.
“I didn’t know she was 13. It wasn’t a deliberate, contemplated act. I don’t feel I have to apologise to her. I don’t think I have done anything to her. I don’t remember her as a scared child,” he told the court.
When she faced her father in court, Daisy told him that “the pain you have caused is immeasurable”, and that he had evaded justice for too long.
“To know I exist because you chose to rape a child, to know you are the sum, the embodiment, of one of the worst things that can happen to someone, to be pregnant by your perpetrator,” Daisy said.
“You have avoided justice for 45 years. You have got to have a family life, had the opportunity to get married, live with children and see them grow up. Because you raped a child I only had seven days at the hospital with my birth mother.
“I am more than evidence; I am more than a witness; I am more than a product of rape. I am not your shame, and I will not carry the horror of what you choose to do.
“We are not our father’s sin. We are not rape babies. We are not the rape clause for benefits. We are not the bad seed.”
Daisy is now campaigning for people conceived by rape to be legally recognised as victims.
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