Everyone thought our father was a firefighter hero

TWO siblings have spoken out about their violent father who launched a brutal campaign of sexual abuse against them.

The despicable Brian Doye raped his daughter Gay Melrose and her younger brother Mark Doye when they were children living in Kent and south-east London in the 1970s.

They waived their right to anonymity after he was sentenced to 28 years in prison following a trial at Swansea Crown Court last month.

To the outside world, Doye was a pillar of the community.

He was a senior firefighter with the London Fire Brigade, wanted to run for city council and had applied to be a foster parent.

But behind closed doors he ran a “house of horrors.”

The abuse of his two children only stopped when they moved out of home at the ages of 16 and 18.

After fleeing his abuse, Gay and Mark did not see their father again until April of this year, when they faced him in court.

Almost five decades after he abused his children, a third victim from South Wales came forward in 2021 and reported Doye for sexual abuse.

From there, the police tracked down Gay and Mark, who also decided to report their father for the horrific abuse he had inflicted on them.

They felt “immense guilt” for not reporting the abuse when it happened.

At sentencing on May 24, the court heard that Doye’s crimes began in the mid-1970s, continued until the early 2020s, and involved two girls and a boy.

Doye was found guilty on 27 counts, which is why the 77-year-old will likely die in prison.

“Immense guilt”

His children have waived their right to automatic anonymity in telling their story, as they believe there are likely more victims.

When she was just ten years old, Gay caught her father raping Mark during a family vacation.

He had already been sexually abusing and raping her for two years. Mark was just six years old.

Doye waged a violent campaign against his children for a decade at a time.

In Gay’s case, he left notes under her pillow saying he would visit her that night.

He told her, “all fathers do this to their daughters” and threatened to have her killed if she told anyone.

In addition to the sexual abuse, he beat Mark every day.

Gay, Mark and the third victim, who wishes to remain anonymous for legal reasons, survived the horrific abuse but described how their lives changed completely as a result of the abuse.

Gay, 56, from Kent, and Mark, 53, from Cambridgeshire, said the abuse had “eaten them up from the inside”.

They described how the abuse caused them to treat their own children differently. Mark said it felt “wrong” to bathe his own children and change their diapers.

Gay said when her daughter was born, she found it difficult to leave her husband to care for her.

Almost five decades elapsed between the three known victims of Doye’s crimes.

Mark, who has two daughters and a stepdaughter, said: “We always should have done it (reported) but we didn’t.”

“We feel enormous guilt that if we had said something earlier there wouldn’t have been another victim, or at least we hope it wouldn’t have happened. It was a terrible feeling.

“We decided we had to do it because he did it again and he’s probably done it many times in the meantime.

“We should have done something years ago to prevent this.

“One of the reasons we want to get our names out there is because we want to set up a hotline or a charity so people can come out because we’ve repressed it and it’s eating us from the inside out.

“It destroys your life, your mind, your self.”

Mark described the abuse as follows: “I think I was about 15 when it stopped.

“I’ve obviously repressed a lot of it, so I don’t know how many times it happened.”

Mark said that while he and Gay were aware to some extent that they were both being abused, they did not talk about it or report it.

Gay, who has three children and three grandchildren of her own, said she first told a friend what had happened to her 10 years ago after bottling it up for four decades.

Gay said: “I don’t remember the treatment, but he started raping me when I was eight years old.

“We cannot remember most of our childhood, only certain parts.”

Gay said the rapes became a “regular” occurrence and that because of her age, she was unable to process her feelings.

She continued: “I knew I didn’t like it and that it felt wrong. Of course I was in a lot of pain too, but I don’t think I had any feelings.”

“The first time he did it was in the marital bed.”

Although she was only ten years old when she realized that her brother was also being abused, she felt she had to take responsibility for protecting him.