Emily, now 22, thought she had a “completely normal” relationship with her father until the morning police arrived at the family home to arrest him for sexually abusing her. Two years later, she and her mother, Fiona, are telling their story as they campaign to make fabricated online abuse confessions a criminal offence.
Fiona described the early-morning raid: “I had just got on an exercise bike, so I was in a T-shirt and pants. I looked out of the bedroom window and saw eight people on the doorstep.” The officers were not in uniform but wore lanyards and had a dog. After Mark was led away, a senior female officer told Fiona he had been sexually abusing Emily, saying he had been caught on a chat forum describing years of rape and abuse, using Emily’s name and details of where they lived. The person he thought he was chatting to was an undercover police officer.
But Fiona knew the allegations did not add up. “They said he had given her baths when she was little, but I said, ‘No, he never gave her baths.’ He wasn’t a hands-on dad.” The police also mentioned a family event that never happened, and showed her a photo Mark had shared – an innocent picture of Emily in a new dress. “That was the absolute worst moment, realising he had used that photo in these chats,” Fiona said.
Emily was woken by a video call from her mother, with police taking over to question her. “I just kept saying no,” she said. In the end, it emerged that nothing Mark had written was true, and he walked free. Emily and Fiona are now backing calls for a change in the law, so that “fantasy abuse” – inventing such confessions online – becomes a prosecutable offence.
