In June 2008, South Wales police take a call from 17-year-old Nicola Tumi and uncover a dark taboo of sexual abuse within a family home. It has lasted more than a decade, and there are two victims: sisters Nicola and Emma. Their abuser is their own father. You could see him locking in a certain way if they say, right, I have an opportunity, do I, don’t I? He wasn’t a father; he was a monster.
Nicola recalled the moment she finally broke the silence.
“I knew in my head that something had to be done. I needed to go to the police.”
Britain’s Darkest Taboos reveals the shocking real-life stories behind the most horrific acts of familial crime, including murder. Laura had to witness her own mother being shot dead. They took our life, our innocence, and our childhood’s destruction. This is one of the most brutal murders I have come across; he stabbed my daughter and granddaughter. And incest—she stopped seeing her father as a father, she starts seeing him as the sexual predator that he is.
Emma shared her own deep disbelief about what her father was capable of doing.
“I never thought he’d go as far as to rape me, ever in a million years. He was my dad.”
On the 30th of November 1990, Nicola Tumi is born in Port Talbot, South Wales, the youngest of three siblings. She has an older brother Ian and an older sister Emma. Emma and Nicola have happy memories of their early childhood.
Nicola reflected on the dynamic of her family back then.
“I’m the youngest of three siblings, um, there’s five years’ difference between me and Emma. We were all like really close. It was like as if the family was complete. From an outsider looking in, we were the perfect family. We were happy, we did a lot of stuff together, you know, we were perfect.”
Nicola has a particularly close relationship with her father, Kevin Tumi.
“My dad was a very happy person, jolly. He was just a typical dad. He did everything to do around the house, he did everything, you know, for me and Emma. You couldn’t wish for a better father.”
Kevin Tumi encourages his daughters to sing.
“Music was really important to my family. Me and my sister loved singing, we just loved everything about it. And my dad enjoyed singing, my mother enjoyed singing when she was really young, so there was always music on in the house.”
Emma and Nicola attend a theater group from a young age, and their dad enrolls Emma in singing contests.
Emma remembered the thrill of those early days.
“I loved all the competitions, and especially after the first one when I won it, it was like, oh my god, I’m quite good at this. And it was something that I wanted to carry on with.”
Nicola looked up to her sister during that time.
“She was my role model. I looked up to her, and I just wanted to be her. I wanted to do what she was doing.”
Psychologist Emma Kenny works with victims of familial abuse at her clinics, and she has been looking into Tumi’s family life. Whilst Emma and Nicola acknowledged that their life felt quite normal, that they had a mom and dad at home, that they felt very happy, and that everything seemed to be okay, they also knew that dad was in control. He looked after all the money, he sorted out all the finances, and he made all the decisions.
Emma described her mother’s lack of independence within the relationship.
“He was a very strong man, and I think because he’d met my mother at such a young age—my mother was a Salvation Army officer herself—I think he just had this control over her. I don’t think that she could make a decision without him, do you know what I mean? So I just think she was scared.”
Detective Inspector Tracy Wheeler of Essex Police has worked with victims and perpetrators of child abuse for more than a decade, and she recognizes warning signs in Tumi’s behavior with his partner. She noted that if he controlled the finances, that would make his partner and anybody that lived with him feel that he was quite an invaluable member of the family. In fact, Tumi works with vulnerable people and children and is a respected figure within the community.
Nicola felt a great sense of pride in her father’s public reputation.
“My dad did a lot for the community. He used to like do the scoring for the cricket team, he used to play Santa at Christmas times for the community centers, did a lot of work with rugby, and he was well respected in the community. I was proud of my dad. There was a lot of things that my dad did that I looked up to him, and I thought, wow, like he’s so respected.”
Emma and Nicola not only idolized their father but saw that their father had that kind of recognition from others around them. It is important to Tumi that his children see him in social situations.
Emma recalled how he acted when they went out.
“After a few drinks, he was up on the dance floor. He’d even get the strangers up to dance, and I think that’s what everybody liked about him—the fact that he wasn’t afraid to get up, be the center of attention, regardless of whether he looked stupid or not.”
Whilst Emma and Nicola see their loving, popular dad as the perfect role model, forensic psychologist Dr. Carrie Nixon has profiled sex offenders in her research, and she believes Tumi is laying the foundations to enable him to offend. Tumi seems to be a showman; he wants to show himself as the perfect dad, the perfect husband, and the respected member of the community, so that certainly shows some narcissistic elements. Sex offenders, in Dr. Nixon’s experience and the sex offenders she has worked with, will spend an enormous amount of energy in the planning, in the grooming, often for years. That is where they are planning, preparing, and working on victims, but not only on victims—also on surrounding people to ensure they are able to offend. In this respect, Tumi is very, very typical of a sex offender.
Tumi is about to betray the loving trust of his daughters in the worst way possible. A person that offends against children, whether that be male, whether that be female, whether that be somebody in the family, would have thought and planned in detail what they were going to do. They would start by testing the waters; they would start by seeing whether or not the victim whom they would have chosen in advance would be complicit, would acquiesce to what they wanted to happen. In 1996, Kevin Tumi targets his first victim: his 10-year-old daughter Emma.
Emma spoke painfully about the day it all began.
“Remember it like it was yesterday, unfortunately. Um, I don’t know what to say because I can see it. Nikki was ill from school; she was laying on the sofa in the living room with a blanket over her. I was going to start a piggy bank, and my dad called me upstairs into his room and said, um, he was going to give me money to start a piggy bank, but I had to close my eyes and put my hands out, and he’d give me money. Wasn’t money. I opened my eyes, seeing what he was doing, and I ran downstairs and hid, actually hid behind my sister. She was like—it was like as if she was there to save me in one way, even though she was fast asleep. I hid behind her and just tried not to think about what had just gone on that day.”
Actually, what he put in her hands was his penis. This was him saying that, or trying to test to see what her reaction would be, and in turn test the relationship and the amount of power and control he had over Emma. But Emma’s response is a warning to her father. By letting him know that she is unhappy with his actions and that she does not like it, he knows that she is possibly unsafe to continue to abuse; she may tell somebody. Tumi needs to make sure Emma stays silent.
“My dad comes straight downstairs after me and told me that, um, it was our secret, we couldn’t tell anyone because nobody would believe me anyway. Um, and that was it. He went out to the kitchen and carried on with his normal day.”
But Tumi isn’t finished with Emma or her sister, 5-year-old Nicola. The fact that she spurned him, if you like, might have meant that he would then turn his attention to the younger daughter. Kevin Tumi is a pillar of the community, but behind closed doors, he begins a 12-year reign of terror.
Nicola struggled with the reality of who her abuser was.
“He was my dad, you know what I mean? I, I loved him so much, and I didn’t think he could hurt me like that.”
Emma and Nicola had their childhood stolen by the one person they loved most in the world: their father. He got really quiet, and you could see him looking in a certain way just to say, right, I have an opportunity, do I, don’t I?
It is 1996 in Port Talbot, South Wales, and father of three Kevin Tumi is well respected as a good family man by the local community.
Emma described how their identity was tied to his reputation.
“We were respected, yeah. If we went out, people would know who we are. People knew who we were, you know, oh, that’s Kevin’s daughter, you know, and oh, that’s Kevin, you know, and that’s how we were known as his family.”
But behind closed doors, Tumi has already begun to abuse his 10-year-old daughter Emma.
“When he was abusing me, he, he wasn’t himself. He wasn’t the, the father that I loved and respected. It was like as if somebody had taken over his body and he was a completely different person.”
Although Emma spurns her father’s advances, Detective Inspector Tracy Wheeler believes this didn’t put him off and claims that sex offenders try different methods to test the waters with their victims. They might touch them lightly, they might play with them in a bit of rough and tumble, they might speak in inappropriate language, or they might use some sexualized words, or maybe leave some pornographic material around to see what the child’s reaction would be. If it was positive—and by positive, she means that it would be positive for the offender and it looked like the child actually wouldn’t go and tell anybody—then what that would do for the offender is reinforce the fact that they would have quite a lot of power over that child, and they would take it further and further and further. After the first incident, 10-year-old Emma is scared to be at home alone with her dad.
“If he knew that we had the house to ourselves for an hour, two hours, or whatever, and he got really quiet and you could see him looking in a certain way, you have to say, right, I have an opportunity, do I, don’t I?”
A few weeks later, Tumi tests Emma again.
“It was early in the morning. I think I slept awkward because I remember going downstairs and my neck and shoulder was hurting on one side, and he said, come here and sit in front of me, I’ll massage your neck and shoulder to ease the pain. He, he did massage my neck a little bit, and then his hands started to, um, wander a bit.”
He actually goes up behind her and suggests to her that if she wants her breasts to grow—and let’s be honest, at 11 years of age, that is what pretty much a lot of girls are hoping for—he actually says, you need to massage them. So he starts to massage her breasts, and she doesn’t like it, and she lets him know that she doesn’t like it. Now, again, this is really testing behavior.
“When I realized what he was doing, I pushed his arms away and I just run off to my bedroom. And he just come up, I was sat by the door, didn’t let him in, and he just said the same thing again, you know, you can’t tell anyone.”
If you think about it, if she had gone and said, dad’s done this, the likelihood is, because it wasn’t actually a serious sexual assault, people would have said, oh, you’re wrong. Emma decides to keep her dad’s secret but keeps a distance from her father.
“After that, I was thinking, I don’t want to be alone with him anymore.”
Emma and Nicola had their childhood stolen by the one person that they loved most in the world: their father. Tumi realizes his eldest daughter is a risk, so he focuses his perverted attention on Nicola, who is just 5 years old. Nicola describes the first time that her father abused her as being carried out through play. In professional experience, that happens quite regularly.
Nicola remembered the initial confusion of the abuse.
“I was 5 years old, and we were in the living room, and we were on our own in the house, and he picked me up, he sat me on his lap.”
Children will play games; children love the attention of adults, and if an adult says it’s a game, it’s a game.
“And he just put his hand on my leg, and then I didn’t think nothing of it, and then it just started getting higher and higher. And then, you know, he put his hand on my private parts. And because I was so young, I didn’t think that it was anything wrong, and I just sat there. And then he just—when he was finished, he lifted me off his lap, put me on the floor, and I just ran out, and I didn’t think nothing of it. I thought it happened to everybody; I thought it was normal.”
Tumi knew that at 5 years of age, it was going to be far easier to abuse Nicola, and she took it as read that daddy loved her. So letting him do what he did to her, albeit that it was painful, albeit that it made her feel uncomfortable, she felt like she was being a good daughter.
“I know he was hurting me, and I didn’t like it. I kept telling him, you know, you’re hurting me, I, I don’t want to play a game no more. And he wouldn’t really stop, so I’d start crying. And then, you know, he’d stop, he’d walk out, and you know, I’d just be sitting there crying.”
Over the next 5 years, the sexual assaults become a regular occurrence for Nikki. But when she starts secondary school, she gets a terrible shock.
“When I started school, a few of my friends were talking about stuff they did with their dads, and something just didn’t add up. And I pulled one of my friends to a side and I said, you know, do you do this for your dad, does your dad do this to you sort of thing? And she said, no, that, that’s wrong.”
By the time she starts to question this behavior, and by the time it’s confirmed by her friends that this behavior is not acceptable, the amount of guilt, the amount of shame, and the amount of responsibility that she has on her shoulders will weigh her down so heavily that the idea of talking about it to a professional—for example, a teacher—is almost an impossible task to carry out.
Despite the abuse, Nicola and Emma maintain a close relationship with their father and become professional singers, performing at local pubs and clubs in the area. Emma is just 17 and Nicola just 12 years old at the time.
Emma described his role in their musical pursuits.
“My dad liked to think he was our manager. He’d make sure all our music was on queue, he’d deal with getting us the gigs, he would deal with all the manager roles, I suppose, so he was a big part in it.”
Nicola felt that singing offered a temporary escape from reality.
“When we started singing in different places like Happy Valley and things, um, it was something that we did, that was our thing, and it was the best time of my life. But you could forget everything that had happened, and it was like as if it didn’t, didn’t happen.”
DI Tracy Wheeler believes that Tumi encouraging the girls’ singing career is part of his grooming process. She noted that by putting them on stage, if you like, on show and performing, it made them very happy. He exploited what children need, which basically is love, affection, and attention. Generally, in a normal happy family, that’s a positive thing. What he seems to have done with the girls is blurred the boundaries between father and daughter, and then it sort of changes the rules.
Emma reflected on the stark contrast between his public and private personas.
“Seeing the way he was outside of the house makes you forget about things that happened inside the house. This bloke goes, you know, the life and soul of the party, everybody loves him, and then like a monster behind closed doors.”
Imagine the confusion as a child. You have this great dad, you enjoy all your time with him, you do fantastic fun things, you have these little secret things that take place when you’re out, you might have a drink, you might be able to talk in a way that you wouldn’t talk at home, and this is all okay. It’s like a special place where you, your sister, and your father exist. How likely are you to risk the 95% of good times for the 5% of bad times? And that’s how abusers work.
As Nicola develops into a young woman in the family home, the abuse from her father escalates.
“In my teens, he tried, he tried doing a lot of awful things. You know, he did try putting his penis in my mouth a couple of times, and I’d always try to just push it away and just get it away from my mouth or get it away from me. And then he’d grab my hand and put it on his penis, and then put my—put his hand over it so I couldn’t, I couldn’t let it go.”
As the assaults become more severe, Nicola finds it hard to understand her father’s behavior.
“He was my dad, you know what I mean? I, I loved him so much, and I didn’t think he could hurt me like that.”
Kevin Tumi has a particular way of abusing his daughter, something that is common in sex offenders. He would never speak as he was abusing her, and he would often abuse her from behind without looking at her. By abusing her from behind, by not talking during the abusing, he’s able to disassociate himself from the situation and just engage in the abuse. This is such a powerful and manipulative trick to play on a child because it almost makes you think, did this really happen?
Nicola noted his relentless nature during these moments.
“He’d never stop until he was satisfied. Never.”
A teenage Nicola pleads with her father to stop the abuse.
“I’d beg him, please no, don’t do this now, don’t, you know, please just don’t do it to me. Every time he’d finish, he’d always say, you know, please don’t say anything, it’s our little secret. You’re going to break up the family if you do say anything, you know that, don’t you? And sort of like manipulating me to think that my whole world had just come crumbling around, around me. I’d lose everything. So everything I had—my singing career, my, my everything I had—was all just going to disappear if I had just told anybody anything.”
They would feel that the only security they had got was their family, their home, their mother, and their father. Regardless of the fact that their father was sexually abusing them, it wouldn’t possibly stop them loving him, so they would just want the abuse to stop.
“I lived in fear all the time. I always started to blame myself. I was always like, why is he doing this to me? Is it my fault? Am I doing something? I always tried to be the best daughter I could possibly be when, you know, we were out and about as a family and stuff, because I thought if I’m good, maybe it’ll stop.”
Nicola begins writing a diary describing what her dad does to her.
“I couldn’t take, you know, carrying this secret around me anymore. I couldn’t take it; it was draining me. Every time he abused me, I wrote it down in my diary, kept it under my pillow with a lock on it, and it helped me so much.”
Sexual abuse isolates people entirely; you feel ashamed of what’s going on. But by recording it, by validating it, it’s almost regurgitating the information, the fear, the pain, the shame, and placing it somewhere else, and it can be a very powerful tool in healing. As they share a bedroom, it’s not long before Emma discovers her sister’s diary.
Emma recalled the moment she discovered the truth.
“I came to a page where she described something that my dad had did to her, and the realization came then that it wasn’t just me. It happened to her, even though she was younger than me, and I, I was a bit in shock to be honest. I wasn’t expecting to read something like that in a little kid’s diary.”
Nicola remembered confronting her sister after the discovery.
“She said, everything you’ve written in the back is true. And I just started crying. I couldn’t really answer that because I was, I was so upset. And she said, you know—she put her arm around me and she said, don’t worry, he does it to me too.”
Emma felt a deep wave of shock over the realization.
“I thought that, um, he’d never do anything to my sister because I pushed him away so many times, and he knew he couldn’t do anything, couldn’t physically do anything. Didn’t think he’d try it with my sister either.”
Nicola found a small sense of comfort in no longer being completely isolated.
“I felt in a way we could help each other. We could help each other through it by talking about it and by letting it out, and you know, I wouldn’t have to write it in my diary anymore because I had somebody to go to. So I think we both found it a bit easier to deal with.”
The girls have each other to confide in, but they are still too scared to speak out.
Emma explained the fear that kept them quiet.
“We didn’t know what to do because we couldn’t say anything, because who would believe two little girls over a respected man? And because we were such a close family, we didn’t want to split us all up.”
In 2007, while still living at home, Emma meets someone and falls pregnant. Unbeknown to Emma, her younger sister is still being abused by their dad.
Nicola felt the weight of her sister’s departure.
“I sort of felt as if I didn’t have anybody there to talk to anymore, and I had to deal with it on my own.”
Emma gives birth to her first child, Amelia, and moves out of the family home, leaving 17-year-old Nicola on her own. Nicola was alone, and she was more vulnerable, and that’s when the abuse by Kevin Tumi got worse.
“I knew my dad was, you know, a bad person with what he was doing, but I never thought he’d go that far.”
Kevin Tumi is planning to take the next step in abusing Nicola, but will it be one step too far? He’s scared them into not saying anything, he’s threatened them into not saying anything, and he’s groomed them into not saying anything. Kevin Tumi sees this as an absolute excuse to be able to push the abuse further, and that’s exactly what he does.
Nicola spoke of the terrifying progression.
“When I was younger, my dad made me do things that I didn’t understand then, and then to do it to my sister as well.”
It’s September 2007 in Port Talbot, South Wales, and happily married pillar of the community Kevin Tumi has been abusing his daughter Nicola for 12 years. At the age of 17, Nicola has begun seeing a local lad, and the relationship becomes sexual. She goes to get a contraceptive implant to make sure she’s protected. Kevin Tumi sees this as an absolute excuse to be able to push the abuse further, and that’s exactly what he does. To Dr. Carrie Nixon, this is the culmination of 12 years of grooming and abuse. He’s scared them into not saying anything, he’s threatened them into not saying anything, and he’s groomed them into not saying anything. But then he’s got the added protection that at that time, it coincides with when Nicola gets the implant. He knew that she had an implant; he knew that the chances of her getting pregnant were zero or very small, so he probably planned it in as much as, when she next comes to the house and as soon as I get the opportunity, I’m going to have sex with her, I’m going to rape her.
A few days after she has the contraceptive implant, Nicola is at her friend’s house, and her mom is out seeing family.
“I knew I had to go home because it was getting late. I knew my dad was alone in the house. I, I was just saying to my friend, I was like, I, I don’t want to go home, I, I know he’s going to, he’s going to do something. I said, I don’t want to go home.”
She knows that when she gets in, very often Tumi will have orchestrated a situation where she’s on her own with him, and she knows that as soon as he’s got her on her own, the abuse is going to take place.
“I went in through the front door, I ran upstairs, and I went in my bedroom, and I sat by my bedroom door. I’d only been home like a few minutes. It’s like a journey off the stairs, and he was pushing against the door. I moved out of the way, let him in. He came in, he closed the door behind him. He started to undress me, he undressed himself, laid me down on the bed. He was holding my hands up, and he jumped on top of me, and he raped me. I couldn’t get this man off me, and I thought to myself, I just need to let it happen, and I just need to, you know, lay there and just leave him do what he’s got to do, and then he’ll go, he’ll go away. It’ll eventually be over. After he’d finished, he’d said, you know, remember now, our little secret. Grabbed his clothes, and he walked out.”
Dr. Carrie Nixon believes Tumi has been planning this attack for a long time. He’s probably fantasized about doing that for years, and he was scared about her saying something, but it gets to the point where he thinks he’s controlled her enough to not speak out. And now there’s not the risk of her getting pregnant, so he feels safe enough then to engage in rape. Nicola is left in her room alone to deal with what has just happened.
“I knew what he was capable of, but I never thought he’d go that far. I never thought he’d go as far as to rape me, ever in a million years. He was my dad, you know what I mean? And I never thought he was capable of it, but obviously he was.”
She spends the night in tears.
“The next morning, things just went back to normal. Go downstairs, you have breakfast. I sort of look at him with hatred, and I’d be like, you’re a disgusting man, and I can’t believe you’ve done this to me.”
A few weeks after the rape, Nicola confides in her sister Emma.
Emma felt an overwhelming sense of guilt when she learned the truth.
“When I found out that he’d raped her, my world kind of came crashing down because I thought, well, I could have stopped that if I had spoken out a bit earlier. If I had said something the first time it happened to me, it probably never would have started with her.”
But terrified of breaking up the family, and with Emma being a new mom to daughter Amelia, the girls decide not to tell the police. To suddenly start telling people the truth and to let people know that this abuse is happening means that your very foundations will change, and it does. So it’s almost easier to suffer the consequences than to see those that you love suffer because of those consequences. In June 2008, Nicola finally decides to tell her mom what’s happened.
“I said, I can’t deal with this no more. I said, I can’t live with it. I said, dad’s been doing this to me. And I started crying. She held my hands, and she said, I’ll try my best to keep you away from him. And that was it.”
The family continued to spend time together, but something changes in Nicola when she sees her dad with Emma’s baby daughter, Amelia.
“When my dad and her were alone together, I couldn’t deal with it. I had to walk out of rooms, or you know, I’d go up to him and I’d, I’d take the baby off him, and I’d be like, come on Amelia, going out on a date with our dog, you know?”
This made her feel, or made her realize, that if she didn’t go to the police, possibly Amelia would be the next victim. People do have trigger points. The trigger points can be something like this: another child comes into the family, or they see a threat to another vulnerable person, and suddenly she stops seeing her father as a father—she starts seeing him as the dirty, horrible, filthy human being that he is, the sexual predator that he is. She didn’t believe that she deserved to be kept safe, but bet your bottom dollar she believes that this little child deserves to be safe.
Emma shared that same protective instinct.
“I wouldn’t like to think that he’d do anything to my daughter, but then I suppose you don’t expect your own father to do things to you.”
A few weeks after she told her mom, realizing that her dad is a threat to her niece, Nicola goes to the police.
“I knew in my head that something had to be done. I needed to go to the police.”
These children have been told all their lives that they will destroy the family, and as they walk into the police station to report this, all of that will be in their mind. And topping all that will be the fact that they may not think that they’re going to be believed. DI Mark Lewis of South Wales Police is the senior investigating officer in this case. He noted that if a victim, when they are reporting, feels that there’s disbelief in the officer, then that affects the whole process going forward. So we believe, we listen, and we investigate.
Nicola felt a massive sense of relief at being taken seriously.
“The fact that they believed me, it meant so much to me because that’s what I was scared of—nobody believing me, and I was going to go to the police station and they were just going to laugh me out of there. And then I was going to have—I was going to have to live with it, and Amelia was going to have to live with it. But the fact of them believing me, it meant, meant a lot.”
Nicola and Emma have to give video statements, and it’s the first time they’ve spoken to strangers about the abuse.
“When I was younger, my dad made me do things that I was too young, all right?”
For anybody to imagine that going in and telling somebody that you’ve been sexually abused is straightforward is completely wrong. It’s really confusing because the consequences of this are huge. And for Emma and Nicola, whilst it’s the right thing to do, it’s an incredibly difficult thing to do and a very, very courageous thing to do.
” When I was little, my dad made me do things that I didn’t understand then, and he used to do it to my sister as well.”
The interviewer asked if she could explain what happened.
“Um, he used to try and touch me places, and he used to try to get me to touch him.”
The interviewer asked what age she was when this started.
“Probably say 9 or 10, maybe. He’d take my top off then and play with me, and I’d say like, dad, stop it, and he would. And he’d take his trousers off and make me do stuff.”
I think Tumi definitely underestimated Nicola. I don’t think he would have expected her to speak out; i think he thought he’d done a good enough job on her from the age of five to 17 to prevent her speaking out. 17-year-old Nicola has to go into great detail when describing the abuse.
“He took my trousers off then and started using his mouth down low, and I’m like, dad, get off me, as long as, um—it was horrible. It…”
It is important to establish exactly what has occurred, when it’s occurred, and where it’s occurred, because within that video interview, what the officer is trying to establish is what types of sexual offense have been committed, because each offense will have different punishments when it goes to trial.
“Then he’d just get up and lay on top of me. Like I said, he, he had put his penis in my vagina and then started having sex with me. Bringing back memories is not the easiest thing to do. It was one of the hardest things I ever had to do.”
The interviewer asked her to explain why she hadn’t mentioned this before to anyone.
“Because I was a kid.”
The interviewer asked what she was scared of.
“Just everything, because I just wanted to forget about it, so I did. I knew I was doing the right thing, and it felt good. It felt really good after; it was like a huge weight had been lifted. I thought, well, I should have done this years ago.”
After the video statements, Nicola is told that she cannot return to the family home, and she is waiting for her father to be arrested. Officers attended there in the morning, arrested him on suspicion of the sexual offenses against Nicola and Emma. He was cautioned, and he then replied to the officers, “I haven’t touched them.” That was his initial allegation. He was taken into custody, taken to Neath police station under arrest, and then he was later interviewed there where he continued to deny the allegations. Tumi thought he was untouchable; he thought that his daughters would never say anything. Nothing will make this man admit that he’s done this because he’s got too much to lose.
The decision was made to release Tumi on bail. In this case, the crime scene was the family home, but this causes the police investigation problems. Kevin had been living at the home for 21 years; Emma and Nicola have been living there all their childhood, so there’s bound to be DNA, fingerprints, fibers, hair, and any other type of forensic evidence in the house from them. So to discriminate whether they were relating to an actual sexual offense against them is difficult. Thus, it was determined in this case that there was no discriminating forensic evidence available in the house.
Police take a statement from Nicola’s mom, where she states she was unaware of any abuse going on until Nicola disclosed it to her just a few weeks earlier. Then, in the weeks that followed, the evidence was gathered, and a file of evidence was presented to the Crown Prosecution Service, and a decision was made that he should be charged. Tumi is charged with 17 different offenses, but with no forensic evidence, will a jury believe Nicola and Emma?
Nicola remembered the painful nature of the accusation.
“He wasn’t the father; he was a monster. They were asking questions like, you know, am I lying? And I was saying, you know, why would I lie? And he was saying, like, for attention.”
That is the most disturbing thing about men like this; potentially everybody knows one.
In March 2009, Kevin Tumi is awaiting trial at Swansea Crown Court for 17 charges of abuse against his daughters Nicola and Emma, but Tumi is pleading not guilty on all accounts. Tumi, like many pedophiles, is a coward, so instead of taking responsibility for his actions, he pleaded not guilty. In fact, I imagine that he didn’t feel like he had any responsibility; as far as Tumi was concerned, they’re his daughters, he can do whatever he likes with them. It shows that he had no value for them emotionally, he had no value for what he’d put them through, and essentially confirmed what they already knew: he wasn’t a father, he was a monster.
Nicola and Emma have to give evidence in court via a video link, but they’re in a separate room from their father, the judge, and the jury.
Nicola described the grueling cross-examination.
“I got questioned by his defense, and that was awful. They were asking questions like, you know, am I lying? And I was saying, you know, why would I lie? And he was saying, like, for attention. And I was like, I’m 17, and you really think I’d come to court, give all this evidence I’ve done, breaking up my family, just for a little bit of attention? It was awful.”
On the 2nd of April 2009, Kevin Tumi is found guilty of eight counts of indecent assault, five sexual assaults, and two counts of rape on Nicola. He is also convicted of attempted indecent assault and indecent assault on his daughter Emma. He is given a total of 14 years and 6 months’ imprisonment.
Nicola recalled the moment the verdict came in.
“When I had a phone call to say he’d been found guilty on all accounts, it was like a huge weight had been lifted because he kept saying, you know, nobody will believe you, there’s no point saying anything. And then when it turned out that people do believe you, they found him guilty, it was like, well, I could have done it years ago.”
Dr. Carrie Nixon believes this case is not unusual. Tumi is a prime example of a familial sex offender. He displays all the characteristics that we see in sex offenders: he’s manipulative, he’s a master at grooming, and he seeks out employment that will put him in a position of trust. He was a sex offender who was liked in the community, and that is the most disturbing thing about men like this—potentially everybody knows one.
Tracy Wheeler thinks Tumi saw having two daughters as an opportunity to offend. Children within the family are easy targets, particularly because of the relationship, the strong relationship they’ve got with their parents. Parents, by their very nature, should be the people that nurture you, and they’re the ones that you trust most in the world. That’s why it’s so destructive; sexual abuse in the family is so destructive. Everything that you ever trusted in your life turns out to actually be betraying you, and that’s what makes children within the family so vulnerable.
For DI Mark Lewis of South Wales Police, Emma and Nicola’s strength has left a lasting impression. To have come forward in the first instance to provide us with the information to pursue this prosecution, to be consistent throughout all the evidence gathering stages, to back it up through cross-examination in court, clearly is an inspirational example of strength and determination through adversity really. And I really think Nicola and Emma are a shining example really for all victims of sexual abuse out there.
For Emma, the guilt of not speaking out sooner is still hard to bear.
“I’ll always feel guilty for like what happened to my sister. Always. I’d never forgive him for—never ever.”
Despite their father’s conviction, the emotional scars remain, and Nicola turned to alcohol to help deal with the pain.
“I always drank to try and hide the fact that I didn’t want to think about it. And he was still living with me, even though he was in prison and even though he was—I was safe, he weren’t around anymore. It just felt as if he was still there. And when I was alone in the house, alone in my bedroom, even though it was a completely different house, I always had a fear of him walking in, and I wanted it all to go away.”
And Nicola turned to strangers for affection.
“Because I was so used to getting that attention off my dad and I wasn’t getting attention anywhere, I’d go out and I’d get attention off complete strangers, and that’s how I dealt with it. I’m disgusted in myself. I, you know, I hate myself for it, but that’s how I dealt with it.”
One of the things that you’ll see with women who’ve been sexually abused is that they often turn it on themselves. You get a lot of women who self-harm; you get a lot of women who might engage in things like promiscuous behavior because they’re used to being used in that way, and they have so much self-loathing that they’re actually looking to punish themselves further. With Nicola, this is what happens.
“It was anger of what he had done to me, and I’d let it happen, and I’d let myself become this person that I didn’t want to be. It took a lot of people to sit me down and to talk to me and to tell me I need to stop. So I went to counseling, and I really owe that woman my life because she saved me. She did.”
Emma and Nicola are very different individuals; they acknowledge that, but they have one very important similarity: they know what it was like to be abused at the hands of their father, and that has made them very close as far as being able to rely on one another. And it’s a long-lasting, lifetime relationship, and essentially, whilst they would never have chosen to have been abused, the experiences have not broken them, and they are leading good lives as good parents and good sisters. That’s why Kevin Tumi has lost.
Nicola spoke beautifully of her bond with her sister.
“My relationship with Emma means the world to me. She’s, she’s my rock. I think if she didn’t step up and give her statement, I don’t think I could have done it. So yeah, she means everything to me, she really does. She’s amazing.”
In the years since their father went to prison, Emma has had another child, and Nicola has become a mom for the first time, and the girls are looking forward to the future with their families.
Emma felt vindicated by their decision to come forward.
“Getting it all out in the open was the right thing to do. Should have done it earlier, but better late than never.”
Nicola felt a profound sense of accomplishment and peace.
“I feel as if I’ve done an amazing thing, an absolute amazing thing. I’m good and really happy. I’ve got an amazing, you know, partner, I’ve got an amazing little boy, we, we’ve got an amazing life together. It will live with me forever, and it will be a big part of my life for, you know, until the day I die. But I live every day as it comes, and I’m thankful for what I’ve got. I really am.”
