https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-9516949/Woman-repeatedly-raped-scientist-father-tells-childhood-new-book.htmlWoman whose scientist father plied her with bootleg alcohol to rape her from the age of 11 and performed DIY abortions after getting her pregnant twice shares her harrowing story in a new book
WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT
Kim Chown, 52, from Darlington, Durham spoke of horrific abuse suffered at hands of dad Francis Beaumont
Paedophile father was renowned microbiologist and lecturer at prestigious universities around the world
She lived a life of forced depravity and rape at his hands shares experiences in book Who Will Believe You?
By Joe Cusack For Mailonline
Published: 08:16, 28 April 2021 | Updated: 13:38, 28 April 2021
A woman who was force fed bootleg alcohol and repeatedly raped by her scientist father from the age of 11 has told of her childhood from hell in a devastating new book. On the face of it, Kim Chown, now 56, from Darlington, County Durham, was the daughter of a respectable scientist and university lecturer who worked around the developing world, moving from Nigeria, Sudan and Brunei to Papua New Guinea and the Atlantic island of St Helena. But behind closed doors, tragic Kim lived a life of forced depravity, rape, sexual abuse and botched DIY abortions all at the hands of her paedophile father. Francis Beaumont, known as Bernard, a microbiologist and histology expert who was an 'esteemed lecturer at universities around the world', even threatened to dissolve his daughter in an acid bath if she ever told of the sickening years of abuse she had suffered. Kim's parents married in 1960, and she spent her early years in Nigeria and the Sudan with both her parents, who separated in 1968, with her mother taking her four children back to Leeds. At the age of 11, Kim's father took her away for what was meant to be a six-week holiday to Kenya, but he kept her with him to endure a sickening catalogue of abuse. In 2018, he was finally brought to justice and jailed for 20 years for five counts of rape, after Kim's husband eventually persuaded her to report him to the police. Her late mother, who died of a heart attack in 2007, was also emotionally and mentally abused by her father and 'struggled with life', according to Kim. Kim's book, entitled Who Will Believe You? details how she was taken thousands of miles from her home in Leeds to Nairobi, Kenya to live with predatory Beaumont. 'The pain was horrendous', she recalled. 'For the next 15 minutes, my father used a coat hanger and a torch to perform his DIY abortion. By the end of it I was in agony.'
When that failed, he force-fed her pills and then tried to 'suck' out the foetus using a bicycle pump. Eventually he took her to a doctor who made arrangements for her to have a termination. The following year, Kim again fell pregnant, but this time she said her father wanted to keep the baby and live as a family. Kim said: 'I couldn't believe it when I was pregnant again less than a year later. This time he wanted to keep the baby and play happy families. Having an abortion was traumatic, but there was no way I was going go through with his plan. A friend helped and he arranged an abortion.'
Kim said her dad 'liked to give the impression she was a man-eater' who would 'seduce any male who stepped foot over the threshold'.
'The reality was, I was so shy, I could barely look anyone in the eye, let alone flirt with them,' she said.
Kim added that having her sister join them in Kenya and having people over to stay 'made no difference' to her father's routine of raping her 'most nights'.
'I was utterly within my father's control and after six years couldn't remember a time when I wasn't being raped,' she said, adding that it didn't occur to her to tell her sister at that time what was going on.
Following her second termination, Kim returned to the UK. Her father took up a microbiologist post in Brunei and Kim thought her nightmare was over. But bizarrely, sick Beaumont gave up his high-flying science job and opened a chip shop in Leeds. Kim said: 'I begged him to let me come back to the UK because I couldn't get a job in Kenya. So, I eventually came home in 1985. Dad owned a house in Guiseley, near Leeds which he rented out, but it was empty. So, I went and stayed there. But he followed me and two weeks later, he turned up at my door. He came back and raped me again. He was following me around raping and abusing me. I couldn't get away. I was trapped. Just like in Africa, he told me that I could never tell anybody and even if I did, he was a respected scientist and university lecturer, nobody would believe me over him. This is why I called my book, Who Will Believe You?.'
At 21-years-old, Kim met her husband Jonathan, a meeting that would signal the end of the abuse. She married Jonathan in 1991 and went on to have a lasting marriage with two children and one grandchild. Since the launch of her harrowing life story in April, Kim has had messages from abuse survivors from all over the world. But it wasn't until 2015 that her husband persuaded her to go to the police. Beaumont, 82, was finally brought to justice in May 2018. At Leeds Crown Court, he was locked up for 20 years after a jury found him guilty of five offences of rape between 1979 and 1985, and received a 20 year sentence. Kim bravely waived her right to anonymity in the hope of becoming an ambassador for abuse victims. Her book is a no-holds-barred account of her life and how she has overcome her trauma to build a happy and successful life. Kim added: 'The book is primarily about closure for me. But it is also to raise awareness of this largely hidden, dreadful scourge on our society. It is so important that people can report this and that they are going to be listened to.'
Kim, who now lives in County Durham and runs a successful business, has been sober for four years since going into rehab shortly after reporting her father to the police.
An estemed lecturer around the world
From a young age, Kim knew her father had an 'important job at a university teaching people about science'.
When she was little they lived in the Sudan and Lagos, Nigeria, before she moved back to the UK with her mother when her parents broke up. He stayed on in Nigeria before returning the UK, then left for Kenya in 1973. He landed a job at a polytechnic in Nairobi to teach histology and histopathology. Histology is the study of body tissues and their structure/function, while histopathology is the microscopic examination of tissue and mainly diseased issue. Kim said: 'I remember seeing him place specimens of tissue on glass slides before staining them pink (or other colours) and looking at them through a microscope.'
Beaumont's next position was in Brunei at the university. But despite being an esteemed lecturer at universities around the world, he then moved back to the UK because he'd bought a chip shop in Leeds. 'Of course it was strange to go from being a lecturer to making chips but I didn't question his life choices, I just made sure to avoid the area,' Kim recalled.
'It didn't take long before I heard that my dad's new venture had failed. I learned he didn't get on with his customers as he told them chips were bad for their health. If they came into the chippie more than once a week, he'd tell them they were eating too much of the wrong stuff.'
Having sold his home in Guiseley and then the chippie, Kim said he squandered the money and moved into a dark and dingey two-bedroom council flat in Roundhay Park, Leeds. Beamount later went to live in St Helena, a remote volcanic tropical island in the South Atlantic Ocean off the West Coast of Africa, part of the British Oversea Territory. Kim said she had no idea what he was up to there but believed he'd found work as a lecturer. 'He'd lied on his CV saying he was 10 years younger than he was,' she said.
Eventually Beaumont moved back to Leeds before marrying a 20-year-old Filipino woman 50 years his junior, whom he'd met online. He spent months in the Philippines.
