A woman who was r@ped by her father has won a payout and an apology from the police after officers told her she would look like ‘the biggest slag going’ if she reported him to authorities.
Carol Higgins, 55, was sexually abused by her father, Elliot Appleyard, now 76, when she was 13 years old.
The mother-of-two first reported Appleyard to the police in 1985, and four more separate occasions stretching from 1984 to 2015. But it wasn’t until 2019 that he was jailed for 20 years for his crimes.
In 1985, Ms. Higgins said she was told by police it would ‘blacken her name’ if she pursued a prosecution and would be considered ‘the biggest slag going’.
She opened a civil court case against West Yorkshire Police four years ago - due to the way her case was handled between 2005 and 2019.
The force has now finally apologised for taking ‘too long’ to bring Appleyard to justice and paid Ms Higgins £15,000 in compensation.
The police finally apologised for ‘taking too long’ to bring Carol’s ‘extremely serious and truthful allegations’ in December 2023.
Carol, an author from Penistone, Barnsley, said: ‘The apology felt like a big relief, and a weight off my shoulders - after battling police for all this time.
‘I’m glad they’re making themselves accountable for how they treated me. It was a big thing, to have validation.
‘Living without that validation created a lot of negative energy inside me. Hopefully, now, I can let go of some of that anger.’
Appleyard r@ped the vulnerable teenager between 1983 and 1985, Leeds Crown Court heard in 2019.
A jury of seven women and four men took less than two hours to unanimously find Appleyard guilty of 15 charges following a seven-day trial.
