A woman has recalled her horrific experience of being repeatedly sexually assaulted in a blackmail scheme for seven years, before discovering her abuser was her own father.
David Masterson, 56, from Dublin, Ireland, was jailed for 17 years for a campaign of sexual abuse towards his daughter Charlene, now 32, which began when she was 18 and continued until she was 25.
talking to The Indo Daily On the podcast, Charlene, who bravely waived her right to anonymity, revealed that her father began abusing her in 2007 after concocting a bizarre blackmail plot that forced her to perform sexual acts blindfolded and with music playing. ears.
It all started when the then-teenager received an anonymous text message in which she claimed to have incriminating information about her that would be leaked if she did not carry out the acts. It later emerged that the text had been sent by David.
Her father pretended to let a person into his house while Charlene was blindfolded and had music in her ears. Pretending to be a different person each time, David forced her to give him oral sex and, in turn, sexually assaulted her.
Charlene Masterson, 32, from Dublin, Ireland, was abused by her manipulative father David Masterson, 56, who was later jailed for 17 years.
Speaking about how the campaign of abuse began, she explained: “I got random messages from a number, I didn’t know the number, and it said ‘I know what you did’, and anyone who knows me, knows that I hate being in trouble, so I immediately I panicked.
Charlene explained that although she hadn’t done anything to expose herself, she still “tried to make things right” and answered the person on the other end of the phone, not realizing it was her own father.
When Charlene responded, the ‘blackmailer’ threatened to sack her father from his airline job at Dublin Airport unless she complied with his demands.
The messages began by demanding that she do sexual things with men and threatening to send information to her father’s work if she didn’t.
When she told her father what was happening, he told her that she would have to do these things because her job was at risk.
She said: “The only person you go to for help is your dad, and I asked for it, and his response was ‘you’re going to have to do it.’ It wasn’t the reaction I expected.”
The person who messaged Charlene never explained what she had supposedly done, but said she was pretty “naive” at the time and panicked.
She said: “It was him, so he knew I didn’t do anything, I don’t even know how he made all this up, he knew exactly what I had done, which was nothing.”
Charlene praised the Dublin Rape Crisis Center for their support during and after the court case.
David Masterson, 55, from Tallaght, west Dublin, pleaded guilty to six counts of rape and sexual assault, representing 30 offenses committed between March 2007 and June 2014.
It was agreed that her father would let a person into his house and she would do whatever this person wanted with her eyes blindfolded and headphones playing music. She was then sexually assaulted.
She said: “I remember him vividly, sitting there in what he had asked me to wear that night and him looking out the window and saying, ‘Oh, he’s across the field.’
‘He’s supposed to be a stranger, so how could my father know what he’s like?’ And then he pretended to be downstairs and then he pretended to walk the person out of the house.
“He would say, ‘Oh, we took him to the mountains and he won’t come back,’ like he was trying to play hero and protector. After the ‘stranger’ left, he would go back to being the doting father.
These incidents continued to occur before she had to have sex with two blindfolded men.
She said: “I had withdrawn mentally, I started to get more physical five years later because I started to confront him and I started to object to it more, obviously he didn’t like that so the coercive control got a lot worse.” towards the end.’
Charlene finally discovered her father’s role in the abuse when she tried to help her grandmother install a program on her laptop and found a DVD with a recording of two of the abuse incidents.
She said: ‘I didn’t see beyond the first 10 seconds. When he got home I was still receiving messages from the stranger and I replied “I know you’re my dad.”
His father ‘screamed’ and asked him how he could think it was him, but he never received any more blackmail text messages after that.
Charlene said that was when the abuse turned into “overt abuse” at home, where he would physically touch her and rape her.
After Charlene began to withdraw, her intern social worker friend asked her if her father was abusing her and she said no. But months later, she was able to open up to her friend.
In 2014, Charlene’s friends went to her mother and explained the abuse she had suffered for years.
As soon as her mother found out what had happened, she told her father to “go away,” and he has had no contact with his wife or daughter since.
David was jailed for 17 years for sexually abusing Charlene over a seven-year period after blackmailing her for the first time.
The Central Criminal Court heard that David defiled three girls, had sexual encounters with two teenage girls and entered into a sexual relationship with a third, who lived with him for a time.
Charlene said she hopes her experience helps a person speak up and know there are resources and help available and not stay silent.
She said: “I feel like it’s an important story, and I know that waiving anonymity could help even just one person speak out.”
Charlene said her father showed no remorse in court, she said: “It was something the judge called the day of his sentencing.”
“The judge questioned ‘is there no remorse?” and his lawyer said ‘there is a complete admission” and the judge added ‘I’m not questioning the admission, but can I confirm that there is no remorse” and the The lawyer said “no.”
“It was heartbreaking, you’d think he’d regret it a little bit.” I will never receive an apology. No regrets, but he has to live with it.
David accepted there were other men involved but only told the gardaí one of their names and claimed it was the only name he knew.
Charlene praised the Dublin Rape Crisis Center for their support during the court case and afterwards.
He said he once dreamed of getting married and having children when he was 30, but now he doesn’t feel like that will ever happen to him.
