Our story by Mark Doye & Gay Melrose

Finally my brother and I got the justice every victim of child sexual abuse deserves.

After a 2 week trial at Swansea Crown Court in April 2024, our biological father Brian John Doye now aged 77 was found guilty on 28 serious indictments against 3 victims, which included us.

4 weeks later the sentencing was held at Swansea Crown Court on 24th May 2024 where 

Brian was sentenced to 28years imprisonment.

Brian joined London Fire Brigade starting as a firefighter in the early 1970s and worked his way up the ranks to an Assistant Divisional Officer at the time he retired.

I was born in 1967 and my brother born in 1971.

To the outside world, our life looked perfect. 

We lived in a lovely 3 bedroom house in Kent opposite a children's playpark. To all appearances we had a contented childhood. Away from the outside world we lived in a house of horrors that was so horrific we couldn't even face talking about it to anyone as children or adults. Not until now some 40 years later! 

Looking back now, as parents and grandparents ourselves. Everything he did evolved around being near children.

The new build house he bought in Gravesend on a new housing estate in 1971, happened to be opposite a large children's play park.

He volunteered as a Father Christmas and also run a Saturday morning film club, for many years in Gravesend.

He became a local councillor in Gravesend, with which people trusted him to come into their homes and be near their children.

When he retired from the London Fire Brigade, he bought a newsagent/sweet shop in the middle of a housing estate in Woolwich South East London. Children loved coming into the shop as the choice of young children's sweets and comics was a plenty.

And then he finally moved away to Wales and married his fourth wife. Where we found out sometime later he used to foster children and be a school bus driver.

The House of Horrors was our childhood for my little brother and I. The normality which was our childhood involved child sexual abuse and rapes on a very regular basis from the ages of 6 years old. Daily beatings were the norm and we had to obey everything he said from cleaning the house from top to bottom, cooking the meals, we were the children running the household. 

Yes, we had a Mother but she was too weak to stand up to him too protect her children from such horrific child sexual abuse, beatings and mental torture. Instead she turned a blind eye. That we will never forgive her for. A mother has one job, that's too protect her children against all odds and she failed.

Our Father had a sexual interest in children, then when he had his own children, that sexual desire was easy for him to fulfil in the safety of his own house of horrors with his own children for over a whole decade.

We will be writing our full autobiography 'House of Horrors' for you to purchase and raise funds for the TEDDY organisation.