She has posted the letters on her website.

“If I didn’t make it public for everyone to see, no one would have believed me. That’s what happens when most survivors come forward,” Lewis said.

In one letter, her father states: “I was satisfying my own sexual needs at your expense. I knew what I was doing was wrong and was criminal but I did it anyway. I knew that what I was doing was going to do emotional and psychic harm to you, maybe serious harm, but I wouldn’t stop and I wouldn’t get help because I didn’t want to get caught.

“I knew you trusted and adored me and I exploited that so I could keep doing it without getting caught or without having to figure out what was wrong with me. Even when you tried to avoid the contact by sleeping in the childrens’ room ... I would come there and risk exposing what I was doing and what was happening to you to them.

“Throughout the whole thing, I did it in such a way to make it look like you were cooperating and consenting, even, maybe, in your own mind, when that was really not true.”

After finishing her bachelor’s and master’s degrees, Lewis lived in different states working as an English teacher for more than 20 years.