FOR years silence grew like a cancer between the two sisters.
They’d both suffered as children yet instead of leaning on each other they turned away, burying the pain of the past under a shroud of guilt and shame.
“We had so much anger in us we directed it at each other instead of where it was supposed to go,” Claudine Shiels says.
But the 65-year-old and her sister, Lisa van der Merwe (61), are done keeping quiet now – and not just so they can seek justice for themselves.
They’ve gone public with their story to try to help other survivors of sexual abuse and show them that it’s never too late to take action.
The sisters say they were
