Man found guilty of rape after the conceived woman pushed charges

Carvel Bennett, 74, from Birmingham, England was convicted for raping a minor in the 70s by the jury at the Birmingham Crown Court after the woman conceived through the rape had pushed charges against him.

Bennett was hunted down by Ms. Daisy, the plaintiff and victim, who was conceived through the rape 46 years ago. The DNA tests conducted on Ms. Daisy and Bennett confirmed he was her biological father.

The jury heard the testimony of Ms. Daisy’s mother who is now 59 and is also a victim of the horrific rape when she was just a minor. In her testimony, she described the events and said she had been told by her mother to babysit Bennett’s children and after arriving at his residence, she was told by one of his children that Bennett wanted her upstairs. It came as a surprise to her to find him at home as she had been asked to babysit his children.

The door behind her was shut as she entered the room, Bennett told her that she would not be hurt and then proceeded to rape her, afterwards telling her not to reveal what he had done.

“He told me to keep quiet. I kept quiet,” the victim told the Jury.

“I just let him do what he wanted to do. I let him use me. I was in shock. I was a scared child. I didn’t fight Mr. Bennett, I was a 13-year-old child,” she further elaborated in her bone-chilling testimony.

The victim had turned 14 just a few days before giving birth to Daisy who was then separated from her and adopted by another family when she was just 7 months old.

Bennett, due to be sentenced on Tuesday, told the court the victim had told him she was 16 and had made sexual advancements. The survivor denied both of the accusations and Bennett refused to apologize for what he had done.

The survivor kept quiet till now because she did not want to be tormented by the heinous act and the trauma it had caused, which is why she had never given any statements to the police also because she was told not to say anything by those close to her and she further said ‘she knew no one would care or believe her. She felt disgusted with herself for years and blamed herself for it’ and went on saying that “I believed it was my fault. I was carrying his shame though I felt the shame was mine,” as quoted by the Prosecutor who was reading her statement.

The victim’s daughter and the plaintiff Ms. Daisy who is also a victim of this terrible crime is ‘overwhelmed’ by the guilty verdict. “It’s been a 46-year wait for justice. I’m happy and overwhelmed, but this should never have taken so long. Now my work begins to get the law changed to get recognition for people like me conceived in rape,” she was quoted by The Guardian saying.

Reading out her statement in court, Daisy said she ‘experienced feelings of wanting to be invisible because of being black and adopted, all while knowing nothing of her past.’

Justice has been delivered but it has taken decades to get justice and Daisy along with her mother, both being victims never got the life nor the relationship a normal mother and daughter would have. This case may be the first of its kind and it is something at least we have never seen before in our lives, but rape is common and there might be hundreds of thousands of children and adults who were conceived through it seeking justice or hiding with the trauma. The lives of the young girls, the mothers are forever destroyed and the children they give birth to suffer along with them their whole lives while the rapists run around free until the victims garner enough strength to ignore the societal stigma and report the crime.