Where There is Evil

Sandra Brown

This is non-fiction at its grimmest and most extraordinary. At a family funeral in 1992 Sandra Brown confronted her estranged father, intending to clear the air over their various minor quarrels. Instead, emotional and caught off-guard, her father half admits to abusing and killing a 12-year-old girl back in the 1950s. The girl was Moira Anderson and Sandra Brown had good reason to remember her unsolved disappearance: Moira had been in the class above her in school.

Her father's astonishing semi-confession was the beginning of a turbulent few years for the author. She learnt that her father had been imprisoned for raping a teenage girl (she remembers his absence - she had been told he was in hospital). She tracked down her cousins and discovered he had also been abusing them thirty years earlier. The answer to the obvious question - did he abuse his own daughter - appears to be "no". Nevertheless it's a devastating portrait of a man who seemingly managed to raise a daughter while unable to keep his hands off other little girls.

Sandra Brown sought for five years to secure her elderly father's conviction for murder. But although the police reopened the case and interviewed the pensioner there were no prosecutions. This book is the only concrete outcome. Moira Anderson's body has never been found.