Alex Scott has revealed that her father’s denial that he abused her and her mother and brother when they were younger had opened old wounds.
The BBC sports presenter said she felt “angry” at herself for “allowing him to hurt me again by those claims of lying”.
It comes after her father, Tony Scott, said he was “never violent” towards her or his family in an interview with the Daily Mail.
Scott, 37, opened up about her father’s physical violence when she was a child in her forthcoming memoir, How (Not) To Be Strong.
She wrote about listening to her father lay his hands on her mother, Carol McKee, while she and her brother were in bed in their flat in east London.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour on Tuesday (3 October), Scott said: “It’s all still so raw. I can visualise it like it was yesterday.”
She added that her mother didn’t “know that her two kids are in the room hearing everything” at the time.
“She’s trying to be strong in a totally different way, we’re trying to be strong for her but can’t help her. The visuals are still so there. I couldn’t do anything,” she tearfully told radio presenter Emma Barnett.
Tony denied her claims and said: “I have no idea why she’s saying all this stuff. I was raised in a strict but loving Jamaican family and Alex should know what they are like. I taught her discipline, I did a lot to help her.
“Perhaps she is judging me by today’s standards. People were a lot tougher back then. But I was never violent, that’s just not me. I never beat Alex or anyone else in the family or did anything like that.”
Scott told Barnett: “That story from him coming out yesterday takes [my mum] back to a place… hearing the pain and the terror again in her voice last night.
“That’s why I don’t know what I can do. But I’m not going to allow him to win [any] more.
“This book, the reason was to get some peace. And I suppose when you are in peace it gives you a new position of power and that’s maybe why he’s trying to [respond] right now.”
Scott’s memoir was published on 29 September and she has pledged that all proceeds will go to help women affected by domestic abuse.
She admitted that she felt “sorry right now that I’ve not used my voice sooner”, but added: “But what [my dad] has done – he lit a new fire in me yesterday... I will do... all I can to help women in this position so they don’t have feelings that my mum has carried her whole life – or that I have.”
