Drama, real. like a soap

By the time Tressa Middleton was 11, she was already heading for disaster. She had been excluded from school for fighting. Then, it emerged that she was pregnant.

Tressa's baby was the product of a rape and the child's father - the perpetrator of the attack - was her own brother. Last year, Jason Middleton, then 19, was jailed for four years for the attack. He was 16 when it happened, five years older than his sister.

Until now, Tressa has 'gone along' with the Lolita tabloid version. Even her parents didn't know. "All those people out there think I'm some kind of slut, but they don't know how it really was," she says."I was about 7 when he started on me and when Jason first did it, I didn't know it was wrong. When I did, I blamed myself. He was usually drunk. Sometimes he bribed me, blackmailed me, to do it. He'd say he was going to tell Mum. He'd give me things - joints, drink, cigarettes. Or he'd threaten me." She doesn't know how many times they had sex, but it sounds like a regular occurrence. Jason's dreadful secret was safe while she was still too young to conceive.

Now, one would imagine that an 11-year- old girl falling pregnant should sound immediate 'abuse' alarm bells with doctors and teachers, if not with parents. In this case, though, there was a smokescreen. It has always been reported that the father of Tressa's child was another teenager, also called Jason, with whom she had sex on a drunken night out. This was partly true and this young man - Jason Cameron, who was 15 at the time, also pleaded guilty to having unlawful intercourse with a girl under 13. Tressa admits that liaison happened, and that she later lied about Jason Cameron being the father of her child. He always claimed that the dates involved made it impossible.

How did her parents react, then, when Tressa finally broke the news that her own brother was the father of her child? "I'll never forget her reaction. She said "you lying b*****d". She told me to go to bed, that I was drunk. Even when the DNA tests were done, my mum wouldn't have it. She wanted me to retract my statement. It has ripped the family apart." Her mother's stance has caused her to wonder about their whole relationship. In her darkest moments, she wonders if her mother even knew about the abuse.

The discovery that she was once a self-harmer somehow doesn't come as a surprise. The smoking started then, too. Cannabis not long after. Her mother knew? 'Yeah. She didn't care. She was drunk herself most of the time.'Tressa's story finds corroboration from some unlikely sources. The barrister representing her brother Jason on his rape charge tried to use the shocking home environment as a defence for the fact that he raped his sister.

She talks about appealing to the courts for access to her child, but in truth that may not happen until her daughter turns 18, by which time she will be legally entitled to trace her birth mother. The big question is whether, by then, Tressa can be the sort of mother a child would want to find. She says she is clean of drugs now, and has 'cut back massively' on the amount she drinks. She is now heading into adulthood in a new relationship, with a 24-year-old called Darren, who 'is the first man to treat me nicely'. She has career plans for the first time in her life, and is hoping to join the Army.