When Jane was 11, her father began sexually abusing her friends. She tells Nick Morrison how a Barnardo's counselling service has helped her rebuild her life.

THE stories had been going around Jane's school for months. At first, Jane denied it, protecting her dad even though she knew the stories were true. Eventually, a teacher found out and her dad was arrested.

"I always used to try and stick up for him because I didn't want people talking about it," she says. "People used to say 'Your dad is a pervert', and I used to say he's not, but I'd go home and cry about it."

The night he was arrested, Jane, then 12, was out with a friend when boys from the school came up to her and began taunting her. When she got home she said she would never go back to that school again.

It was almost a year before the case came to court, when her dad was convicted of abusing nine of her school friends. He was sentenced to two years, but it was only just before the trial that Jane started to see him for what he really was.

It had started with her dad asking her questions about love and boys when she was eight. It was as much in the way he asked, probing and inappropriate, as the questions themselves, but it made her feel uncomfortable. He took her on bike rides and took his clothes off, complaining of being hot. Sometimes he took everything off, although he never touched her.

Jane - not her real name - was about 11 when her dad's attention switched to her friends.

"They used to come and sleep over and he would come down in just his dressing gown, and if we were playing board games he would say did we want to play truth or dare," Jane says. "We didn't see it as a bad thing, we just played along with it, but I wasn't comfortable with it.

'He kept saying my friends were beautiful and he persuaded my mam to let them stay all the time. He started taking his clothes off. He just used to stand there and he would say to my friends, 'Will you take some of your clothes off? It isn't nice to be by myself'. At first it was a laugh, but one of my friends said her dad didn't do that. He did stuff with my friends. He used to feel them up."

Jane, now 15 and living in Newcastle, was always present when it happened - "I didn't want my friends abused behind my back," she says - and knew everything that was going on. Her mother used to go to bed early, leaving the way clear, although on one occasion Jane's grandmother, who lived with them, came downstairs and nearly caught them. "She took me out of the room and said, 'Is there anything going on?', I said no," she says.

"He always said, 'Don't tell your mam, we might end up splitting up'. I knew it was wrong from the beginning but I still loved him so much. I didn't want him to get into trouble."

But his secret did come out. One of Jane's friends had sent her dad a Valentine's card and had boasted at school of him kissing her. Eventually the gossip reached a teacher. Social services and the police were called and her dad was arrested. Jane's initial reaction was distress at her dad being taken away.

"It was really hard because I saw my dad as special. The first two weeks I was just crying non-stop. I was really upset he wasn't there and worrying where he was," she says.

At first, Jane said she didn't want to give evidence against her dad. Social services asked if she wanted to see him. She said yes, although she says it was mainly for her sister's benefit, who was seven and missing her dad terribly.

"They took us to this family centre and as soon as I saw him along this corridor, that was when it hit me: he was not the person I thought he was," she says. "I had seen him as a really kind, caring person. I thought what was happening was maybe wrong, but wasn't that serious.

"But as soon as I finished seeing him I said I was going to give evidence. I still loved him, but I was angry at him. I just thought he had damaged all our lives."

At first, her dad denied the charges, but three days into the trial he changed his plea. He was sentenced to two years. But the anger that had welled inside Jane now came bursting to the surface. She likens seeing the transformation in her character to watching a film: she went from a quiet and positive girl to a violent and destructive one. On occasions, she hit both her mother and her sister. She went through four social workers. After leaving her school, she went to four other schools over the next four years. She walked out of lessons, often crying. Her attendance record plummeted; for a whole year she was barely in school at all.

"I was punching the walls, smashing vases, I was just damaging everything. It was the feelings I had towards him: I just wanted to smash a vase over his head. It was the only way I could deal with it, I ended up being violent," she says.

Her relationship with her mum deteriorated and several times she walked out of the house, once sitting in a bus shelter just streets away for 28 hours. Her sister, who didn't know why her dad had been taken away, was often crying, wondering when he would come back.

"The house just felt so empty and everybody just broke down and went into themselves," Jane says.

She started going to counselling at Barnardo's and then became involved in the charity's Mosaic project, working with victims of sexual abuse. Earlier this year, the group produced a book of poems about their experiences.

"When it first got found out I felt I was the only one. I felt I stood out and people could see I was abused," she says. "The book is amazing because you realise you're not the only one, there are other people who have been abused, and you know what people are going through."

Three years on from the court case, she still feels the need to smash things, although now confines herself to the cheap glasses her mum buys for the purpose. Her parents are now divorced and her dad, after serving a year in prison, has moved down south. Her mum still mourns the loss of her husband, despite what he has done, and her sister still wonders why her parents split up. "She knows he has done some stupid stuff and that is enough for now," Jane says. "She doesn't want to know all the details."

Jane still sees her dad, although she says it is mainly for her sister's benefit. When Jane becomes 16 later this year, she plans to tell him what she thinks of him.

"After I'm 16 I'm allowed to see him by myself and I'm going to jump at the chance and go and shout at him," she says. "He doesn't deserve to live the life he expects.

"I look at my dad now and I just want to smash his head in. People have said don't go and see him, but when I finally tell him how I feel I want to see the reaction on his face. He can never expect me to be a daughter to him any more because of what he did.

"He has damaged my life so much I just want him to suffer, I want him to be upset. I want to know why he did it, and then I want to get on with my life and not be with him. I just want him to feel bad."