A woman who happened to bump into her uncle who abused her as a child some forty years ago, ended up doing something unexpected to him.
Tracey Davison
Tracey Davison, now a 50-year-old woman bumped into the uncle who had s*xually abused her and her sister 40 years earlier – so she punched him in the face in the middle of Asda.
According to Metro UK, Tracey Davison, now a 50-year-old mum of two, shouted ‘this is for all the abuse!’ as she hit Douglas Richardson twice, breaking his glasses and knocking him to the ground.
Richardson jumped up and ran away, while Tracey phoned the police and finally reported the historic attacks.
Appearing at Newcastle Crown Court, Richardson was jailed for three years for the abuse he inflicted on Tracey and her sister Donna Cunningham in the 1970s.
‘I had never done anything like this in my life, but it was as though someone had taken over my body,’ Tracey said. ‘I was overcome with emotion, I couldn’t stop
myself.’
Although Tracey is from Gateshead, she was shopping in the Asda in Cramlington, Northumberland on that day in 2014 because she was on her way back from a holiday.
‘I was standing at the returns desk when I heard a voice I recognised behind me,’ she said. ‘I turned around, looked at him and I said to the young girl on the till, “I am going to be sick”.
Tracey in the present day
‘I turned to him and said, “You don’t remember me do you?” He said “no” with a smirk on his face. He thought he was going to get chatted up.
‘I told him I was Tracey, his sister’s daughter and he said, “I was just talking to her a couple of months ago”. I knew he was trying to cover up. My mum hadn’t spoken to him for years, since we told her what he had done.
‘I just punched him in the middle of the face. The wooden glasses he was wearing had cracked in the middle.
‘I said, “That is for all the abuse all those years ago”. He ran out of the shop.’
Neither Tracey nor Donna had realised the other sister was abused by Richardson until they both confided in their mum when they were in their 20s.
By then Donna, who is now 52, had moved to Southampton in an attempt to leave Richardson and the past behind her – and with young children to support, neither sister felt in a position to report him to the police.
It was only when Tracey bumped into him in Asda that they realised the time was right to take him to court.
Richardson was convicted. But as he is terminally ill, he had his sentence halved to just 18 months so that he could leave prison and seek treatment – news that has left the sisters ‘devastated’.
‘I am glad he was locked up but he should have been given longer,’ Donna said. ‘It is absolutely disgusting that he is being released. We have got no justice for what we have suffered.’
She added: ‘What he did will stay with us for the rest of our lives.’