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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1284127/Revealed-The-tragic-truth-Britains-youngest-mother-rape-father-child-really-is.html
Whatever your views on abortion, there are many reasons why you could understand a girl like Tressa Middleton wanting to terminate a pregnancy.
Sadly, her age - she was just 11 when she became pregnant - is only one reason, and perhaps not the most compelling at that.
Yet, nearly five years on, she insists an abortion never crossed her mind. Why? ''I wanted the baby, no matter how it was made,'' she explains. ''I knew I would love it, whatever. And it would love me.
''Babies always love their mothers, don''t they? It''s one of them things about life.'' The poignancy of that statement can only be fully appreciated when you know the real story behind Tressa''s baby girl, and the family she had the misfortune to be born into.
You may think you do. A media frenzy has surrounded Tressa since it emerged, in 2006, that she was to become the youngest mother in Britain.
Back then, Tressa couldn''t actually be named because of her tender years, but she was nonetheless interviewed about how she was shopping for a pram, and how she was going to kick the ''booze and fags'' and be a good mum. Readers duly shuddered.
Earlier this week, Tressa was back in news because, having turned 16, she could be identified for the first time.
This time the story, illustrated by a heart-stopping snapshot of her on the day she gave birth, seemed to have come to a pretty predictable conclusion. The drink and drugs hadn''t stopped.
The baby, a girl, had been adopted. Tressa had no access, save for a twice-yearly letter. She railed at the unfairness of this, but, in truth, few could sympathise.
The inevitable conclusions were drawn: Tressa was a feckless youngster, whose whole existence had been characterised by too much bad living and too little discipline.
By continuing on her destructive path even after her child was born, she had blown her one chance at redeeming herself, and sealed her own fate.
Harsh? Yes, but mostly true. Tressa would say so herself, and does today. Yet it is not the whole story.
The point that has been missed in all of this - and one that turns the story into an even more troubling one - is that Tressa did not get pregnant after a drunken fumble, as was reported earlier this week.
Her baby was the product of a rape and the child''s father - the perpetrator of the attack - was her own brother.
Last year, Jason Middleton, then 19, was jailed for four years for the attack. He was 16 when it happened, at the family home in West Lothian, five years older than his sister.
Tressa admits that liaison happened, and that she later lied about Jason Cameron being the father of her child. He always claimed that the dates involved made it impossible.
How did her parents react, then, when Tressa finally broke the news that her own brother was the father of her child?
''My mum didn''t believe me. I knew all along that it had to be my brother''s baby, but I didn''t tell anyone until I was 14. I was in care by then, in a residential home, when it all came out.
I told a friend. She told one of the care workers. They got the police in right away so I had to tell my mum.
''I''ll never forget her reaction. She said "you lying b*****d". She told me to go to bed, that I was drunk.
''Even when the DNA tests were done, my mum wouldn''t have it. She wanted me to retract my statement. It has ripped the family apart.''
Because of her age at the time, Tressa could not be identified as his sister, or named, so the two stories could never be linked.
Until now, Tressa has ''gone along'' with the redtop tabloid version of her own life story, allowing herself to be painted as some sort of wayward Lolita because, as she says: ''It would be a nightmare for my family if the truth came out.''
Yet, today, partly because her relationship with her family seems beyond repair and also for her own peace of mind, Tressa has taken the extraordinarily brave step of waiving her legal right to anonymity (one afforded to all rape victims, whatever their age), to tell the Daily Mail the truth about how her child came to be.
The real, appalling story comes tumbling out when we meet in a hotel a little way from her council house in Dumfries. Tressa was re-housed there on recommendation from social services that she be moved as far as possible from her family, who live in the West Lothian town of Armadale.
Why this was for her own good becomes pitifully clear.
She is a tiny, nervy, figure who shakes constantly, and keeps disappearing outside for a cigarette. Yet when she smiles she is very pretty. And still so desperately young to have to deal with all the opprobrium so unfairly heaped upon her.
''All those people out there think I''m some kind of slut, but they don''t know how it really was,'' she says. ''I was 11. I didn''t even know what sex was - or what it was for.''
She says the rape was not a one-off, but part of a wider pattern of abuse, which started as much as four years before.
''I was about seven when he started on me and when Jason first did it, I didn''t know it was wrong. When I did, I blamed myself. He was usually drunk.
''Sometimes he bribed me, blackmailed me, to do it. he''d say he was going to tell Mum. he''d give me things - joints, drink, cigarettes. Or he''d threaten me.''
She doesn''t know how many times they had sex, but it sounds like a regular occurrence. Jason''s dreadful secret was safe while she was still too young to conceive.
Once her periods started aged nine, however, he was playing Russian roulette.
Now, one would imagine that an 11-year- old girl falling pregnant should sound immediate ''abuse'' alarm bells with doctors and teachers, if not with parents.
In this case, though, there was a smokescreen. It has always been reported that the father of Tressa''s child was another teenager, also called Jason, with whom she had sex on a drunken night out.
This was partly true and this young man - Jason Cameron, who was 15 at the time, also pleaded guilty to having unlawful intercourse with a girl under 13.
In August 2006, he walked free from the High Court in Edinburgh, after the judge placed him on probation for three years, accepting that he believed the girl - Tressa - to be 14, not 11.
Tressa admits that liaison happened, and that she later lied about Jason Cameron being the father of her child. He always claimed that the dates involved made it impossible.
How did her parents react, then, when Tressa finally broke the news that her own brother was the father of her child?
''My mum didn''t believe me. I knew all along that it had to be my brother''s baby, but I didn''t tell anyone until I was 14. I was in care by then, in a residential home, when it all came out.
I told a friend. She told one of the care workers. They got the police in right away so I had to tell my mum.
''I''ll never forget her reaction. She said "you lying b*****d". She told me to go to bed, that I was drunk.
''Even when the DNA tests were done, my mum wouldn''t have it. She wanted me to retract my statement. It has ripped the family apart.''
Her mother''s stance - they are now effectively estranged - has caused her to wonder about their whole relationship. In her darkest moments, she wonders if her mother even knew about the abuse.
''Obviously, at the time, I didn''t think she possibly could, but now ... I don''t know. I hate to think like that, though, because no mum should ever let her children go through that.
''And if she did know it makes me feel that she doesn''t love me. And if she doesn''t love me, why did she have me?''
Unravelling the mess of Tressa''s life in one afternoon is an impossible task. But three hours after the start of our interview, when I finally get round to asking about the scars running up and down both her arms, the discovery that she was once a self-harmer somehow doesn''t come as a surprise.
By then, as well as the rape, we have covered her own substance abuse - taking in everything from cheap cider to heroin, via cannabis and cocaine - exclusions from school, and her dreadful journey through the British care system.
That''s not forgetting two suicide attempts and the small matter of giving birth at 12.
Where do you start? Inevitably, it is with her own parents, Gary Middleton and Tracey Tallons, who are now both in their 30s and living in West Lothian. Never married, they had four children together, but split before Tressa went to school.
Tressa is now in a new relationship with a 24-year-old called Darren, who ''is the first man to treat me nicely''
Her father did not move far away, but appears to have been absent from her life for some very crucial years.
''He wasn''t really around much when I was little. I don''t blame him for that, though. He didn''t really know how to be a father, but he has improved recently and he''s still there for me, which is something.''
Gary doesn''t exactly sound like a tower of support, though. What was his take on how his grandchild came to exist, I asked? ''He says: "Jason is my son, and you are my daughter. I can''t take sides." ''
But in Tressa''s formative years, Mum was in control. Or not.
Tracey had six children, consisting of Jason and Tressa, and their two full siblings - and there are two younger boys, who each have different fathers.
That Tressa can''t immediately remember the name of one of these fathers (''he lives in England and he''s married'') speaks volumes.
What she can remember about her childhood, though, is her mother''s drinking. ''She''s an alcoholic, no question.'' Tressa''s earliest memory is of going into care - her mother''s choice, she points out - when she was four years old. ''It was the day before Christmas,'' she says.
Since then she has been in and out of care ''like a yo-yo'', and has totted up 12 different ''placements'', mostly with foster families.
But, despite her unhappy home life, Tressa still always wanted to go back to her mother. Why, if things were that bad? She looks blank. ''Because that was my family.''
It was in the family environment that she first started to drink, aged nine. The tipple of choice would be Buckfast, the cheap tonic wine so beloved on deprived housing estates like hers.
The smoking started then, too. Cannabis not long after. Her mother knew? ''Yeah. She didn''t care. She was drunk herself most of the time.''
The only way to describe this family''s home life is feral. Neighbours frequently
complained, and there were constant visits from the police.
Tracey, Tressa claims, wasn''t aware for much of the time whether her children were at school or not. Mealtimes might happen or not, depending on her state.
Tressa''s story finds corroboration from some unlikely sources. The barrister representing her brother Jason on his rape charge tried to use the shocking home environment as a defence for the fact that he raped his sister.
Richard Goddard told the court: ''My client was deprived of a normal upbringing. He had no moral framework. He had almost nonexistent parental guidance.''
Knowing what we now do, you have to wonder why the young Tressa was consistently returned to this environment by Social Services. I ask Tressa if she thinks being sent back was in her best interests.
She shakes her head. ''Probably not. It was what I wanted but it probably wasn''t the best thing for me.''
By the time she was 11, Tressa was already heading for disaster. She had been excluded from school for fighting. Then, it emerged that she was pregnant.
Her mother ''went mad'', but never once asked the sort of questions that might get proper answers. Instead, she trilled to a red-top newspaper how ''proud'' she was. Tressa gets distressed when she talks about her little girl.
She tells me the precise time she went into labour, down to the minute, in the summer of 2006.
It is hard to work out how much she had to do with her child. Both mother and baby were put immediately into care, so the foster parents were the ones with primary responsibility.
Tressa says she adored her daughter - ''I would have given my life for her'' - but it was a complex relationship.
''There were times I looked at her and I saw my brother Jason in her face,'' she concedes. ''That made it hard. But I still loved her, with all my heart.''
And yet, by now, Tressa was a lost child herself. She had never stopped the ''fags and drink'', and so she continued on her destructive path, under the very noses of her social workers.
She ended up in a residential unit, rather than with her child.
''It went downhill from there,'' she explains. ''I was seeing her, but only for short periods.
''She went from calling me Mum and reaching out for me, to not wanting to come near me. She would be screaming.''
It seemed inevitable that the authorities were always going to take Tressa''s baby away from her for good. What other avenue was possible?
She tried to commit suicide when she saw it coming, in 2008, swallowing as many drugs as she could - the cocktail included tranquillisers and methadone, washed down with Buckfast, vodka and cider.
She told friends she ''didn''t want her baby to have a mother who was this f***** up anyway''. But her stomach was pumped, and her life saved.
When she was 14, she could hold her great secret - that her brother was the father of her child - no longer.
And when it came out, her family, such that it was, fell apart In the event, Tressa was the one who signed the papers 18 months ago authorising the adoption.
''But I signed the papers because I knew I would lose in court and they would take her from me anyway. This way I thought I would get visitation rights.''
That was not to be. She hasn''t seen her little girl - who will be four this year - since she handed her over to her adoptive parents, ''who seemed very nice''.
She is only entitled to a letter twice a year, updating her on her child''s progress.
She says she has kept all her child''s clothes, and sleeps with a little pink Babygro and hat under her pillow.
''I know the adoption was in her interests. She''ll have a better life. But she is still my little angel. She''s my girl and I want contact with her. I''d do anything for her.''
She talks about appealing to the courts for access to her child, but in truth that may not happen until her daughter turns 18, by which time she will be legally entitled to trace her birth mother.
The big question is whether, by then, Tressa can be the sort of mother a child would want to find.
She says she is clean of drugs now, and has ''cut back massively'' on the amount she drinks.
She is now heading into adulthood in a new relationship, with a 24-year-old called Darren, who ''is the first man to treat me nicely''.
She has career plans for the first time in her life, and is hoping to join the Army.
As she gets up to go, I ask if she still loves her own mother, about whom she has only talked with bitterness and hurt....
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1284127/Revealed-The-tragic-truth-Britains-youngest-mother-rape-father-child-really-is.html#ixzz0q1GDwuBK
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