Sometimes when Daria Aspen looks back at her nine-year-old self – the age she was when her stepfather began to sexually abuse her – she pictures the scene from The Matrix when Keanu Reeves’s mouth seals up and disappears.
Her stepfather had warned her that if she told anyone what was happening, her mother would kill herself. He promised her he would never go to jail – and she believed him. Ashamed and frightened, she thought her silence was buying her family’s safety. “Looking back, there were many things I could have done to get out of the situation, but I just felt I couldn’t,” says Aspen. “I felt physically incapable of speaking it. It was stuck behind my teeth.”
