A teenager has given a moving account of her sexual abuse by her dad, for whom she eventually had a baby, from age 6 till about 14, and how government authorities lightly handled the matter .
Shannon Clifton was raped by the man who was supposed to protect her and has had his baby but now she wants to help others see “the light at the end of the tunnel”.
Her evil dad Shane Ray Clifton sexually abused and raped her for eight years until she was 14, sometimes up to four times a day, reports Derbyshire Live.
At the age of 13 Shannon, who grew up in Chaddesden, gave birth to his child
The baby was later adopted but Shannon hopes to have a relationship with him in the future.
The horrific sexual abuse came to an end when Shannon was a pupil at West Park School, in Spondon.
Binman Clifton, 36, was jailed for 15 years but Shannon later found out his sentence had been reduced to 10 years.
She now says she wants to flee Derby before the monster is released from jail.
She is now living an independent life and wants to inspire others through her new book, The Monster I Loved.
Shannon said she went to live with her dad, at the age of five, when her parents split up.
Shannon said: “It was nice at first but he started getting abusive. I would come home from school and he started to hit me. I just got used to it in the end.
“The first time it happened was when we moved into a flat near Elvaston Castle. “It started becoming sexual. There was one time in the front room on the floor. I’ve tried to block it out so I don’t remember it all.”
Shannon was a pupil at Breadsall Hill Top School at the time. She said she used to go to school “with bruises all over” but was instructed to tell teachers she had been play fighting with her cousins.
After a period of time, Shannon and her dad moved back to Chaddesden.
Shannon said: “That’s when everything started getting worse. sexual abuse was becoming more regular.
“When I was younger it was just once or twice here and there but then it started becoming every day, then a few times a day.
Shannon said she was often raped before and after school and sometimes in the middle of the night.
She said: “I only understood what sex was when I was about nine and we were learning about it at school.
“I remember the first time we were taught sex education, my teacher told us ‘nobody should touch you in these places’.
“I was shocked because I thought, that’s what my dad does to me.”
Shannon said her dad treated her as his wife. He regularly asked her to clean the house and make his dinner from the age of nine.
When Shannon was 11, she noticed her body starting to change and realised she was pregnant.
She said: “For a while, I didn’t tell him. But when I did finally tell him, he beat me up. “It was all really confusing, I was a child carrying a child.”
She worked out that she was around 28 weeks pregnant when she lost the baby.
In December 2012, Shannon became pregnant again. She said she wasn’t surprised she lost the baby “because of the things I was going through”.
Shannon said when she was 12 she told a teacher at school and a social worker that her dad had broken her nose.
She said: “They took me away for one night and then the next day I went straight back to him.
“They didn’t do anything about it, so I thought there’s no point in telling people anything. “I put myself in more danger by telling them. I was too scared.”
Shannon said summer was the worst time because her dad would sexually abuse her outside the house.
She said: “He used to take me out and do it in fields and woods. “At night, if he had been drinking at a family thing, on the way home he would do it in an alleyway.
“I tried to fight back but I used to get hurt more. It was easier not to do anything. I thought it was going to last forever.”
Shannon desperately pleaded with her dad for the sexual abuse to end.
She said: “He used to say ‘I’m not going to do it again, I promise you. I’m really sorry, I will get better.’
“Then give it an hour and he would be at it again.”
In 2013 Shannon was pregnant again with her third baby. She was at The Kingsmead School and her dad used to stand outside the school grounds and “watch all the time”.
She said things came to a head at the end of her pregnancy, at which point she was a pupil at West Park Academy.
Shannon said: “He had just raped me upstairs and I was screaming and crying. “I ran downstairs and I got a big knife and thought if I stab myself straight in the heart the baby won’t die, and I don’t have to put up with this anymore.
“But I needed to be there for my child. If it was a girl, he could’ve ran off with her too.”
She said he still abused her throughout the pregnancy but would not let her go to hospital.
But teachers noticed a week before she gave birth and social care workers at the police turned up at her school. Clifton was not arrested and went off on the run with Shannon for a week.
Her dad told her when the baby was born, he would kill him. At the end of the week, they went to DW Fitness in Pride Park to change clothes when a member of the public spotted Shannon and called the police.
Shannon said: “It was hard, because that was the last time I ever saw my dad, and I think I knew that.
“Even though he did everything that he did, he was the only person I grew up with. He was all I had.
“But he took my childhood away from me.”
When she got into hospital, the day before she gave birth, nurses told Shannon she was over 39 weeks pregnant. Shannon kept her child for a year but gave him up for adoption at the age of one “because he needed a better life”.
But she hopes to have a relationship with him when he grows up.
Shannon is now studying forensic psychology with the Open University and planning to release her book, The Monster I Loved, before the end of the year.
She’s also doing a course in motivational speaking. She said: “I want people to see that there is a way out.
“There is always a light at the end of the tunnel. Most people look at me and wouldn’t know I had been through that.
“You won’t get over it, but you can move on from it. I know I’m worth more than that.
“Sometimes you have to make positives out of a bad situation.”