Sarah Keavney and her wife were watching a documentary when she stood up and walked over to the phone.

“I’m doing it,” she said. “I’m ringing the police.” Her wife looked over at her and asked if she wanted to sleep on it.

“No, if I don’t do it now I won’t do it in the morning. I’m going to report him.”

Five years later the man who woke six-year-old Sarah to molest her as her brothers slept next door is behind bars.

But it’s been a long road to justice.

As a young girl, Sarah was kept silent. She was threatened, told that she would be separated from her family if she spoke up about the abuse.

For years she went through countless therapies, battling anxiety, fear and guilt, until one evening in 2019, whilst she watched as a woman recounted similar disturbing abuse at the hands of her dad, she found the courage to speak up.

Now, as Peter Hayes begins a five year jail term, Sarah has waived her right to anonymity to reveal the trauma she felt burdened to carry and the courage she found to speak out against her abuser.

Her family first moved to Partington, in Trafford, when she was around five or six-years-old. Her parents made friends with a woman who lived across the street. Her boyfriend was Hayes.

“They just used to hang around in the same circle of friends,” Sarah said.

“We did have a set babysitter who would sit for us, but he said he was happy to do it as well. Then he seemed to befriend certain people in the family.

“If my nan took us to the park he would just show up, or if my mum had gone out for the night with a couple of friends, he would turn up. He was very clever, he would just speak to the adults and never singled me out.

“Looking back, it’s like he tried to befriend the adults to gain their trust.”

It was then in 1985, when their babysitter was unavailable, that Hayes offered to babysit. Sarah’s parents had separated, and her mum had gone out for the evening.

“He came into my room and woke me up to commit the offences. I was asleep. And he woke me up. He came in and told me what to do,” she recounted.

Hayes sexually assaulted her as her brothers slept in the room next door. He then cruelly threatened her.

“He said if I said anything I wouldn’t see my dad again and I could be taken away from my parents and my brothers,” she said.

“As a child, you’re very innocent. Although you know it’s wrong, this person is trusted but you know something is wrong. It’s horrific to think back now, at the age I am, to think anybody could say that, it’s awful.

“It was the threats about if I said anything to my mum [about what Hayes did] which frightened me. I was a very quiet child anyway, the separation of my parents affected me, and I was quite vulnerable to begin with. To have those threats on top was just horrific.”

Hayes went on to abuse Sarah again, completely unbeknownst to her mum and dad. He would leave 50p on her bedside table as another cruel reminder of his abuse.

Terrified, Sarah kept silent. Her parents reunited and the family moved away from the area. The last time she saw Hayes was when he visited their new home. He never babysat her again.

“My dad was known for being quiet, he was a bodybuilder and had quite a short temper and what hurts me more than anything if my dad had been there this would never have happened,” Sarah said.

“But the fact (was) he knew my mum and dad had separated, that’s why he thought he could get away with it.

“For years I never forgot his face, his face haunted me. At night time I started wetting the bed – I did have a fear of him.

“Even into adulthood, the thought of bumping into him just used to set my anxiety off. I often thought ‘Do I find out where he is?’. I had this idea of walking into the pub where he was and saying ‘Remember me?’ But then deep down inside, did I ever have the guts to do that?”

Fast forward to 2019, Sarah and her wife of 20 years were watching a documentary, Britain’s Darkest Taboos, on Sky Crime. She had been in and out of therapy since she was 18, learning how to understand and deal with the crushing secret that Hayes had forced her to keep.

That was until she watched a woman speak about her devastatingly familiar story.

“I think at that point I’d been dealing with it for so many years and with having young children myself and being overprotective of my children, I felt like it was them. So I just picked up the phone,” she said.

“Vic [her wife] said ‘What are you doing?’. I said ‘I’m ringing the police’, she said. ‘We’ve been here, before do you want to sleep on it?’ I said ‘No, if I don’t do it now I won’t do it in the morning’.”

Sarah called the police and gave brief details over the phone before they arranged for her to go to a local police station. As she hadn’t seen Hayes for over 30 years, she said she had to provide images of him from Facebook. She found he had seven accounts on the social media platform.

Police then knocked on at Hayes’ address on Upper Chorlton Road before agreeing to go in for a voluntary interview. No mugshot was taken.

Over the course of two years the Crown Prosecution Service made a decision to prosecute, Hayes pleaded not guilty and a trial date was set. It was adjourned a number of times over the next three years until June this year when Hayes eventually pleaded guilty to indecent assault on a child and indecency with a child.

He remained on conditional bail throughout, with the condition that he couldn’t be in contact with children under 16.

“I was worried everyday that he was free to walk down the road and talk to any child, free to stand outside a school, I really struggled with that the most,” Sarah said.

“I carried it with me for years, it felt like it was on my shoulders that I had not reported it earlier, so how many other children would he have been in contact with, and he‘s still walking the earth like nothing happened.

“He denied it to everybody up until going to court and then said ‘Yes, I did it’. And then he was granted bail again until his sentence in October. He was walking around even though he was guilty.”

“I don’t know why the court let him walk out when he had pleaded guilty.

“I had to psych myself up to stand face-to-face with him and then it got kicked back again and again. For 39 years I’ve kept silent. For 39 years I’ve compromised so much in my life because of what happened and then we got to D-day and I still had to compromise. It was like having two steps forward and 20 steps back.”

Hayes was sentenced on October 12 this year, during which the court heard the horrific details of his abuse.

“When I saw him, I sat there thinking I’m not that little six year old child anymore, I’m an adult and I can fight my own battles, that’s one of the reasons why I wanted to face him. He knows what he did, this [motioning to her body] is sacred now,” Sarah said.

During the hearing, she bravely stood in the witness box and read her victim impact statement.

“I was absolutely determined that it was going to come from me,” she said.

“Once I’ve done that, I’ve faced him and had my say. There’s only two people in that room who know the whole truth and nothing but the truth. I should have that moment of saying you know what was wrong. I know it was wrong. You know exactly what you did.”

Hayes, of Upper Chorlton Road, was jailed for five years and four months at Minshull Street Crown Court. He was also made subject of a Sexual Harm Prevention Order for life and must sign the Sex Offenders Register indefinitely.

The impact of the last 39 years have played havoc with Sarah’s mental health. She described rebelling at an early age, drinking alcohol and being unable to focus on a career.

“I never felt I was good enough for a career, relationships were horrendous and I felt like broken goods,” she said.

“My innocence had been robbed, my childhood had been robbed. It wasn’t until meeting my wife and starting therapy that I began to deal with it. It’s an ongoing process all the time.

“The time [in prison] that he gets will never get me back, all the heartache, all the stress, all the anxiety, all the therapies, the loss of a childhood. I just think he could come out in three-and-a-half years and he could be alive until he’s 90, where’s the justice?”

A week on from the sentencing, Sarah said she is still waking up in the night, suffering flashbacks and anxiety. She also said it has affected how she cares for her five children.

“I don’t have many people over the doorstep for obvious reasons. I make sure my children feel protected and my home is my safe place because I never had that,” she added.

She described having the ‘most loving upbringing’ and whilst her family didn’t have a lot of money, they did have ‘love in abundance’.

“I was brought up to tell them anything but because I knew it was wrong and the threats he made, because I knew how my dad would react – it was super scary for a young child,” she said.

“I look back at that little girl and I’ve brought her forward with me now. I don’t feel I have to go back and visit her because she’s standing by my side now.”

Sarah is hoping that speaking out will encourage other victims to come forward.

“The only thing I want to do is empower other victims, that’s the hope. I don’t want anybody else to experience what I’ve gone through,” she said.

“The more people who stand shoulder to shoulder, means that more victims empower each other.”

She is also campaigning for a change in the law to ensure sex offenders get remanded into custody after a guilty plea or verdict whilst waiting for their sentence. At the time of writing, the petition has over 12,000 signatures.

Sarah added: “I think I will always be dealing with it in a way. I feel like the fire has been put out and I’m now dealing with the ashes.”