As a child, Rebecca Dale was sexually abused by a vicar. She tells Women's Editor Christen Pears how, after 40 years, she is rebuilding her relationship with God.

"DON'T tell anyone what happened or God will be angry." For months the words echoed around 13-year-old Rebecca Dale's head. She had gone to church from being tiny and religion was as much a part of her life as her family and friends. The thought of making God angry terrified her, but she knew what had happened was wrong.

Rebecca was being sexually abused by a vicar and although she needed help, she was afraid to ask. "When you're a child, you think people like that are going to look after you and protect you. I knew what was happening to me wasn't right but because of who was doing it, I didn't know how to stop it," she explains.

"People think it's something that just happens in the Catholic church - there are so many scandals - but it happens in the Anglican church as well. It happens wherever you get someone in a position of power who's willing to abuse it."

Rebecca has lived with the secret for more than 40 years and it is only now, aged 56, that she has begun to come to terms with what happened to her. She now lives on Teesside but grew up in Sheffield and, as the daughter of religious parents, she went to church every Sunday. "It was a way of life for me," she says.

When she was about 13, a new vicar joined the parish - a married man in his 50s with two grown-up sons. The congregation loved him. He was lively, outgoing and a tireless fund-raiser but there was another side his parishioners didn't see.

"I used to help out with Sunday school and one week he came in afterwards when I was on my own tidying up. One minute he was helping me stack the chairs and talking about ordinary things like school and the next minute he was touching me.

"I didn't know what to do. When you're that age and an adult asks you to do something, you just say yes. It only lasted a few seconds and he didn't hurt me but I was frightened. He told me not to tell anybody and that if I did, God would be angry."

Rebecca was subjected to similar ordeals over the next three years - not regularly, perhaps once every couple of months - but it got to the stage where she was afraid to go to church.

"It didn't happen all the time but if I was ever on my own with him, he would try and touch me or rub himself against me. Sometimes it would be in the church hall after Sunday school or he would think of errands so I would have to go to the vicarage. I couldn't say no.

"I started to feel sick when I had to go to church and make excuses. My mum thought I was just being an awkward teenager but I couldn't tell her the truth."

Even if she had plucked up the courage to tell her mother, Rebecca is fairly certain she wouldn't have been believed. "My family were very religious. They wouldn't have thought a vicar was capable of anything like that," she says with a wry smile.

Rebecca believes she wasn't the only one in the congregation targeted by the vicar. There were always rumours about his behaviour and it became a running joke that he attempted to look up the girls' skirts.

He moved to a different parish just before Rebecca sat her O-levels and, although she was relieved, she says she was already scarred.

"I know worse things happen to people than what happened to me but none of it is acceptable. It damages you. For ages I felt like I had done something wrong, that I was a sinner, because he had made me feel like that. It took me a long time to get over it."

One way of putting the past behind her was to stop going to church, which she did as soon as she left home and started teacher training college in Sunderland. She simply cut religion from her life.

"How could I believe in a God who had let that happen to me?" she asks.

She says her experiences affected her relationships with men. She found it difficult to trust them and none of her boyfriends lasted more than a few weeks. She began to think she would never break out of the pattern until she met fellow teacher, Martin. "He was different - really kind, patient, just a nice bloke - and he helped me a lot. I told him about what had happened. He was the only person I told and he was amazing."

The couple got married in a register office, much to the chagrin of Rebecca's mother, and they had two daughters, now aged 25 and 20. It's only in the last couple of years that she has told them about what happened to her.

She has tried to put her ordeal out of her mind. She doesn't even know if the man who abused her is still alive but she says that kind of thinking would only cause trouble. "It's no good wondering what I would do if I saw him again. What's the point? When something like this happens you have to deal with it and try and move on. You never forget it but you can't let it ruin your life. I don't think I could forgive him. I know that's not very Christian but he took away my innocence and he destroyed my relationship with God."

But last year, unexpectedly, Rebecca began to rebuild that relationship. While visiting her daughter at university in London, she was walking past a church and felt something drawing her inside. Although she had been in churches for weddings and funerals, she hadn't worshipped since she was 18. "I don't know why it happened then but I went in and sat down and I just felt that God was with me, and that was the first time I had felt that in a very long time. I know it sounds clichd but I felt like I had come home," she says.

Since then, she had started attending church. She doesn't go every week but she goes at least once a month. She says: "I'm taking it slowly. It's something I want to do but it's something I have to do in my own time. I can't just forget what happened to me and I don't think other people should forget that this kind of thing happens."

* The names in this article have been changed.