We as a family – and as a society in the UK – hadn’t realised at the time there was so much more to the story. It’s bizarre, looking back now, how obvious it was.

The Sunday Mirror’s investigation revealed that up to 1,000 children could have been groomed in Telford since the 1980s. It described how my dad groomed Lucy from the age of 14, and that other girls being abused were threatened with “ending up like Lucy” – in other words, dead – if they told anyone.

I was so confused at first. When you’re taught a certain story, you know that story, you understand that story, and think that’s the only story it could possibly be. That’s how I felt about my parents before seeing the article – it was OK, because they were in a relationship. Seeing a different story in the paper, at first I thought, “No, that didn’t happen. They’ve got this wrong.” It was really difficult to accept this completely new perspective, and it was so personal. It took a while to come to terms with it.

The investigation made me question everything I thought I knew about my past, and I had to find out more. I decided to look at the court transcripts from my dad’s trial to see if they held any more clues.

Tasnim returns to the original court documents to search for clues Tasnim returns to the original court documents to search for clues

It was very confusing reading the records of the hearing. Lucy and my dad’s age gap was mentioned, but people didn’t seem to acknowledge it. It wasn’t just two or three years – it was nearly ten years. According to my mum’s friends, my dad would check her, examine her body, to see if she’d been with other men. He’d ring her to say he had someone following her to keep tabs on her. There were suspicions she was having sex with other men in the churchyard. We don’t know if it was a gang thing, if she was being exploited, because it wasn’t looked into.

Lucy Lowe was 14 when she became pregnant by taxi driver Azhar Ali Mehmood Lucy Lowe was 14 when she became pregnant by taxi driver Azhar Ali Mehmood

Me and my grandad have spoken about it a few times. I've always challenged him – why didn’t he do anything? Why did he think the relationship was OK?

Grandad told me he “didn’t take much interest” in my dad – but that Lucy and my dad argued a lot. I asked if that was because my dad was demanding sex from her.

“He did go upstairs a lot,” my grandad told me. “One time, I heard someone shouting, ‘Rape! Rape!’ I went running in, I kicked the door down, and he went running down the stairs and outside. The neighbour’s boyfriend ran after him.”

I asked why nobody told the police.

“I don’t know. Was she crying out for help? If she came to us, we would have done something.”

“But you and Linda heard her shout ‘rape’ and you did nothing,” I responded. “That was abuse, it makes me sad.”

It also upsets me, though, that there’s all this blame, all these questions as to who’s at fault. I had to ask these questions, because I wanted to understand. I think my grandad does feel a lot of regret, a lot of hurt that there were things he and my grandma Linda could have acted on. But back then in society, everybody felt the same. Nobody had any education on the matter. Even if my grandparents did do something, would the professionals have listened to them?

I wanted to know how my dad felt, too. Was he sorry? What did he think about the arson attack now? When I was 16, I went to visit him in prison. It wasn’t a hard decision. I’d have gone sooner if I could, but there was a court order that stopped me until I was 16. Initially, I just wanted to meet him, have a catch-up, and understand the situation. I also wanted to meet him and understand his hobbies, his dislikes, him as a person, and find out a bit more about where I’m from. I wanted to form my opinions based on him as a person, not just what happened.

The way I feel about him is confusing. It’s not black and white. The answers he gave me – it was like I wasn’t getting a full response, almost like I had to record what he said and listen back to it a few times, to read between the lines. Certain things he’d open up about, and others he wouldn’t – it depended on what I was asking him. But I’m glad I went. I needed to do it. I think there was more that I’d have liked him to tell me that he just wouldn’t give away.