A woman who was sexually abused by her uncle has said her mother accused her of lying and misled police in an effort to shield him.
Marie Lansdowne, now 40, was 11 years old in 1995 when Lloyd Burgess, 65, began abusing her during weekend stays at his home.
The abuse continued for three years, despite her pleading with her late mother — Burgess’s twin sister — not to make her visit him.
Mrs Lansdowne, from Warminster in Wiltshire, said she spent most weekends at Burgess’s house and would sleep in her cousin’s bedroom, only for him to repeatedly carry her from the bed into his own room, where he molested her.
Now a mother of one, she recalled waking to find him touching her, while feeling unable to move or tell him to stop.
Mrs Lansdowne, who has waived her right to anonymity, said she now believes her uncle — jailed for 11 years in May — may have given her something that left her unconscious while the abuse was carried out.
‘At first, it was a nice, normal uncle-and-niece relationship,’ she said.
‘Then I began waking up in a different bed from the one I had gone to sleep in — I would be in his bed.
Marie Lansdowne was sexually abused by her uncle beginning when she was 11 in 1995. She said her mother branded her a liar when she tried to report the abuse
Lloyd Burgess, her mother’s twin brother, was jailed for 11 years in May
‘Physically I couldn’t move and he would be touching my vagina with his fingers. In my head I’m there saying ‘please stop’ but I couldn’t physically do anything about it.
‘I don’t know if it was fear but there was something stopping me. I’d go to my cousin’s bed and I’d wake up in his bed.
‘If my cousins were there, I used to share a bed with his daughter, and I’d still wake up and be in my uncle’s bed. I never woke up when he was moving me. If I woke up it was while he was doing things to me.
‘I still have flashbacks and nightmares of what happened – it’s like I’m there all over again and that it’s happening in real time.’
She said she believed there were occasions where he indecently touched her but she did not wake up.
‘In my head he was giving me something to knock me out because there were times I’d wake up in his bed in the morning and physically, I could feel that something had been going on.’
She begged her mother not to bring her to Burgess’s house but said she always refused to believe her.
The abuse continued until she was 13 but her mother, now dead, would not take action.
Mrs Lansdowne said: ‘I dreaded going to his house and I used to feel sick. It was like being in a horrible movie. You knew what to expect but you couldn’t do anything to stop it.
‘I spoke to my mum numerous times about it and I’d tell her ‘I’m waking up and he is doing things to me’ but she always portrayed me as a liar.
‘I was always disbelieved and made out to be the villain and I was always discouraged from mentioning it and not going to the police.’
Mrs Lansdowne pictured when she was 13, after two years of abuse at the hands of her uncle
Mrs Lansdowne had tried to stay away from her family after the abuse began but was sometimes forced to be in the same room as her abuser at events, eventually moving away to escape him,
In 2021 a conversation with her husband prompted Mrs Lansdowne to report her abuse to Wiltshire Police.
But she claimed her mother lied to police once when they asked whether she had ever stayed at Burgess’s house – her mother said she had not.
‘She preferred protecting her brother than protecting her daughter,’ Mrs Lansdowne said.
Burgess pleaded guilty to two counts of indecent assault between October 1995 and October 1998 when he appeared at Winchester Crown Court in March.
He was jailed for 11 years in May and given an indefinite Sexual Harm Prevention Order – he must also sign the Sex Offenders Register.
Mrs Lansdowne said she was ‘happy’ with the sentence.
‘I wasn’t expecting anything major and when they rang me and said he got 11 years I was like ‘thank god for that’.
‘He can’t do anything to anyone else. By the time he comes out of prison he is going to be in his 70s and if not older.
‘I am hoping that now his face is all over the place people are going to realise who he is and things are going to progress from there.’
Mrs Lansdowne pictured at 5 years old. She later moved away from her family to escape her abusive uncle
But she said her abuse had affected her deeply and afterwards she had gone ‘off the rails’ with people who tried to get close to her.
She said: ‘I was very violent towards people, typical teenage boys tried to grab your boobs and I would turn around and try to punch them and I got in trouble for doing it.
‘But at the end of the day I was a child trying to protect myself from a physical assault.
‘I suffered really bad anxiety and depression I would shut myself in the house. I ended up having to leave work because I couldn’t deal with it.
‘It’s something that you never get over with. People say to me ‘it happened a long time ago’ but these things live with you for life and it’s only with support that you feel you can achieve any sort of life worth living and I never had that until I met my husband.’
Mrs Lansdowne, who suffers from depression, fibromyalgia and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) said she was now at peace because Burgess ‘can’t get to anyone’.
‘If I can help these other victims and survivors get justice for themselves and the inner piece then I am happy,’ she added.
Wiltshire Police Det Con Nicky Cross said: ‘I’d like to take this opportunity to praise the victim in this case for her bravery in reporting her ordeal to police all these years later.
‘In doing so, she has enabled us to conduct an investigation into Burgess’s offending and ensure he was put before the courts.
‘This case should serve as an example to anyone who may have experienced this kind of ordeal that it is crucial you report this to police, regardless of how much time has since passed.
‘We will always take reports of this nature seriously and will leave no stone unturned in investigating offenders like Burgess.’
