A mum walked in on her soldier husband abusing their terrified young daughter who had "no life" left in her eyes.
Danielle Keenan was just seven when dad Michael Keenan started sexually assaulting her around one Christmas.
The teenager, now 18, from Oldham, Greater Manchester, and her family were living in Germany at the time on an Army barracks.
When her mum - who wished to remain anonymous - became ill after giving birth to twins and stayed in hospital for an extended period the abuse got worse, reports the Manchester Evening News.
When she was nine, Danielle's dad - a private - raped her and said if she told anyone they wouldn't believe her.
She said Keenan first sexually assaulted her when she was sick with a stomach bug.
“I thought I was being delusional,” Danielle said.
“He made me touch him. I had underwear on but he would grind up against the back of me. A couple of weeks later, he came back into my room and did it again.”
She said her dad warned her at first if she told anyone the army would shoot him.
Danielle, from Royton, has waived her right to anonymity so she can tell her story publicly for the first time.
She said Keenan began assaulting her "properly every night" when her mum was in hospital for several weeks with an infection.
"He would start doing it every morning and night. He would come into my room and ask me to get into bed with him," she explained.
“We lived in Germany and I was away from all my family and friends.
"We were constantly moving all the time, and that’s one of the things he was banking on. I didn’t have anyone else permanent other than my mum.”
One day Danielle was asked to clean out the rabbit hutch in the basement when her dad followed her.
Describing the rape, she said: “We had a pull-out sofa because it was a kids’ room. I didn’t know what it was, it just hurt. He said if I told anyone, no one would believe me and I would ruin the family.”
The student said she had tried to tell people about the abuse but “couldn’t find the words”.
Danielle's mum, 38, noticed her daughter becoming withdrawn.
After coming upstairs to check on her one night, she found her husband on the bed with her.
Danielle used teddies to show her mum what had been happening.
"I told her everything after showing her. After that, I knew he was lying and they would believe me," she continued.
She said Keenan denied it at first but then "turned and said, 'She's telling the truth'".
Danielle's mum said it was one night after work she realised what was going on.
“Leading up to this, I had already been concerned about Danielle. I had spoken to him about it and he said she was probably just adjusting to the move and missing her friends," she said.
“I went upstairs to find him and Danielle’s door was cracked open. He was lay down with her and I didn’t see anything, but I saw Danielle’s face and she wasn't there. It wasn’t my little girl there. There was no life – nothing.”
Danielle‘s mother hesitated in the doorway for a second before the harrowing realisation set in.
“I swear to God, for two seconds, I don’t even know how long it was, I was arguing with myself in my head,” she said as she began to cry. “I thought, ‘This can’t be it.’
“He started play fighting with her because she sat up on her knees and pointed at me. She kept looking from me to him while he tried to play fight with her. It was so staged; I’m not stupid.
“He was waiting for me to leave first, and obviously I wasn’t going to. As he walked out of the room, I shut the door behind him.
“I looked at Danielle and said, ‘Has daddy done something?’ and she said, ‘Yes’. I asked her to tell me and she said she didn’t know how.
“I gave her two teddies and asked her to show me. She put them together and I knew. She touched my face and said, ‘Are you okay mum? Is daddy going to get shot?’“
The mum-of-five still struggles with guilt every single day.
“The worst part is, I feel so guilty,“ she added. “It went on for so long and I never knew. His friends were messaging me and crying on the phone saying he wasn’t like that and he was all about his kids.
“I was groomed by him because it was all a lie. I lived a lie for 13 years. I met him when I was 18 - I thought I knew everything about him."
Keenan, who was 34 at the time, was arrested that night after Danielle‘s mother alerted military police.
Keenan walked out of their home, which sparked a police search, before he eventually handed himself into a barracks.
In court, he admitted 10 child sex offences and was sentenced to five years imprisonment in 2015.
Then, on New Year's Eve of that year, Danielle messaged her grandmother on an iPad and told her she had been raped by her father. The police were immediately alerted.
Following a trial at the Military Court Centre in Colchester, Keenan was found guilty of rape of a child under 13. He was sentenced to 11 years and six months imprisonment.
The dad-of-six, who served with the 3rd Battalion RLC, could be released next month on parole.
Danielle‘s family are fighting for an exclusion zone to be put in place near their home to prevent Keenan from contacting them – but she says she is “terrified” at the thought of her rapist being free once more.
“When he gets out, how can I be one hundred per cent we are safe?”
Danielle now suffers from PTSD and insomnia as a result of the abuse.
While she’s taken part in rehabilitation programmes and continues to have therapy, she will carry the trauma of what happened to her for the rest of her life.
“I barely sleep at night and I get flashbacks and panic attacks all the time. If someone touches me, even on the shoulder or the arm without me knowing, I freak out.
“He could be getting out next month and I just want everyone to know who he is so no other child can get hurt like I was.”
