'Heartbroken' mum of teen who took her own life after dad sexually abused her speaks out about tragic loss

dailyrecord.co.uk:

The heartbroken mother of a teenager who took her own life after her father sexually abused her has opened up on her devastating loss.

Gemma Mckeown's daughter Megan Reid, from Livingston in West Lothian, died on 5 April at the age of just 17. Two years earlier, in 2019, her dad Joseph McGinn was convicted of sexually assaulting her.McGinn's vile abuse of Megan began in 2008, when she was just four years old.But it wasn't until Megan was 13, that she finally revealed the awful truth to her mum on Mother's Day 2018 - a moment Gemma describes as 'the biggest shock of her life'.Speaking to the Record, Gemma, 34, said: "I felt like my whole world had come crashing in on top of me."I went into a total state of shock.

It was terrible."I collapsed, I was sick. I picked up the phone straight away and reported it to the police."I was on my hands and knees screaming down the phone to them."McGinn was found guilty of sexually assaulting Megan at Glasgow High Court on 17 October 2019 and sentenced to 18 years.But Gemma said that despite his conviction, her daughter was so 'broken' by the abuse she suffered that she was never able to come to terms with what she had been through.The distraught mum also told how Megan was left 'crushed' by the reaction of some extended family members who had branded the teen a 'liar'.Gemma continued: "Megan was a good girl, but what happened to her left her crushed and broken."Knowing some people didn't believe her left her feeling betrayed and abandoned."She would lie in her bed crying.

She self-harmed and she was suicidal for a lot of the time."She was drinking to try to block it all out, but she couldn't. Daily life was too much for her."All she wanted was to die."Gemma, described Megan as a