I was groomed and kept in my abuser’s home for ten years, his parents were in the next room and never realised

HEARING a knock on the front door Tanya Kach tiptoed towards it. Quietly opening it she was asked just one question by the people outside. Her one-word answer changed her life forever and ended the decade of abuse she had been suffering at the hands of her abuser.

“The police came to the door and asked me if I was the missing schoolgirl Tanya Nichole Kach,” she remembers. “I was terrified, but I told them ‘Yes.’ It was the simplest yet the hardest work to say. It ended my ten years of torture.”. It has been almost 20 years since Tanya was freed from her prison where she was held by Thomas Hose.

“I never thought I would escape the horror of my abduction," she admits. “I’m still telling my story nearly two decades on so that no other child has to suffer like I did.”. Tanya now lives outside Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania with her husband, logistics manager, Karl McCrum, 54, with her stepdaughter, 33, and stepson 28 and is a proud step-grandmother to a ten- and five-year-old.

“You never totally recover but I love my family,” Tanya says. “I consider them a gift from God.”. Tanya Kach was 14 years old when she befriended a security guard at her school, Thomas “Tom” Hose. “He was the head of security at Cornell Middle School in McKeesport, Pennsylvania,” she says.

“I was bullied at school, and I was struggling after my parents’ divorce, so I was thrilled to just have someone to talk to. “The fact that he was 38 made me feel special.”. On 10 February 1996, Tanya ran away from home to move in with Hose. She says: “He convinced me I would have a better life.

“He’d groomed me so well I thought he was offering me a fairy tale ending.”. Tom took Tanya to the house he shared with his two aging parents and his son sneaking her upstairs to his room. “The first week felt like a bit of adventure,” Tanya admits.

“He let me smoke and treated me like an equal. “We stayed up late and talked and watched TV. He brought takeaway and we planned a future. “I was too young to realise I was being groomed, it was only a week later that his abuse started.". Tanya says she prayed authorities would find her.

However, as Tanya had a history of running away for twenty-four hours staying out late or at a friend’s, her father Jerry assumed this was another instance of this. It was only a few days later that he began to worry about his daughter’s whereabouts, filing a missing person’s report on February 14.

“I became known as the Girl on the Milk Carton because in the US pictures of missing children are put on milk cartons in the hope, they will be found by people seeing them,” Tanya says. Tom told me if I fell pregnant, he would kill me. Every assault was like Russian roulette.

“There was an extensive search, but no one found me. “Police thought I was a simple teen runaway. There were no signs of a struggle or violence. There were no suspects and everyone at school even Tom told police they had seen nothing and heard nothing.

"I know I went willingly, but that doesn't excuse what happened.”. What is perhaps most shocking about Tanya’s abduction was that it happened in plain sight of Hose’ family but they did not suspect a thing. "It may sound ridiculous, but Tom’s parents were very old and frail and had no idea I was kidnapped under their roof,” she says.

“His son, who is two years younger than me, saw me a couple of times but he was told I was Tom's girlfriend. “Tom had as much control over his family as he did me.". Tanya was forced to live inside Tom’s bedroom being subjected to daily sexual abuse.

“He raped or assaulted me multiple times a day,” she says. “Tom made me document the specifics of each assault in a calendar so he could brag to his friends about his new girlfriend.”. “Tom told me if I fell pregnant, he would kill me. Every assault was like Russian roulette.”.

When he was at work, Tanya was alone in the room, forced to use a bucket rather than being allowed access to the toilet. “I was allowed to do quiet activities, like reading, watching TV at low volume and listening to music with headphones,” she says.

“I did as I was told, I was terrified of him. “His coercion and grooming were so complete I lived in fear of upsetting him and being punished with rape or beatings.”. Tanya admits she did try to escape a few times by attempting to sneak out at night but was caught by Hose each time.

"He’d threaten to kill me in my sleep, throw me in a garbage bag and throw me away,” she says. “He convinced me no one cared or was interested in me and therefore there was no reason to escape.”. Then in 2000, Tom gave Tanya the alias "Nikki Diane Allen" and told his family that she was his girlfriend.

“I was so brainwashed and terrified I did whatever he said,” she admits. “After four years in captivity, Tom let me out for the first time to buy clothes, giving me directions and waiting for me to return. “It felt like a test. I knew someone would die if I did not return.