When I was six, I told my mother that a regular visitor to our home would sometimes climb into my bed and touch me in ways that hurt and scared me.
When I tried to explain what had happened to me, I struggled to find the right words to label it as rape and sexual assault. I simply gestured to the places where I had experienced violation, hoping that she would comprehend the depth of my distress.
Perhaps you would expect her to respond with empathy, embracing me in a reassuring hug, offering solace, and promptly involving the authorities. However, her reaction was far from supportive. Instead of showing concern, she regarded me with a defensive and incredulous look that still haunts me.
She retorted sharply, dismissing my account. “Stop exaggerating,” she insisted. “I’m sure you are mistaken. You must be confused.” Then, without taking any action to intervene, she abruptly left the room, allowing the cycle of abuse to continue unchecked. Her callous rejection not only shocked me but also epitomized her distorted perspective on motherhood.
My mother, Vera, I came to realise, simply didn’t have it in her to love anyone but herself. In short, she was the definition of a narcissist. From the outside, we had a glamorous life in our beautiful house in Bel Air, surrounded by the LA celebrities of the time. My mother was a beautiful, charming and vivacious woman and an extremely talented violinist. Dad was the rock star Dick Halligan, who founded the jazz-rock band Blood, Sweat & Tears.
Our home was a haven for free-spirited musicians, who would indulge in all-night jamming sessions, fuelled by alcohol and drugs. I was often exposed to drugs and had to step over their friends passed out on the floor.
Now, as a mother to my nine-year-old son, Otis, I realise this was a total dereliction of parental duty. But I was too young to understand that then.
Obsessed with her looks and what others thought of her, my mother thought the duties involved with motherhood were beneath her. That’s why she repeatedly failed to shield me from adult excesses and callously swatted me away when I complained of sexual abuse at such a tender age.
When I was six, I told my mother that a regular visitor to our home would sometimes climb into my bed and touch me in ways that hurt and scared me, writes Shana Halligan
I felt the weight of her brutal indifference for the next 45 years, honestly believing I would never be able to forgive her. And yet, just a couple of months ago, I finally did – albeit on her deathbed. I said I hoped she would find peace and forgiveness wherever she was going – even then she rejected me.
Though she couldn’t respond verbally, the sounds she made and the way she squeezed my hand made it clear she wasn’t having any of it. Had she been able to speak, I’m certain she’d have told me that, once again, I’d got it all wrong.
But the fact is Mum treated me terribly. She never hit me, but was mean and a terrible shouter. She’d yell at me for laughing too loudly in the garden or playing too happily with my dolls in the back of the car – anything that suggested I might be having fun. As far back as I can remember, there were no bath time rituals or bedtime stories. I put myself to bed. No one tucked me in or wished me goodnight. She was too busy partying downstairs with her glamorous friends.
She left our housekeeper, Catalina, to look after me. I craved the normality I saw my school friends take for granted – family meals around the table and parents who cared whether or not they did their homework.
Meanwhile, our fridge was full of alcohol, but very little food. Mealtimes were fend-for-yourself affairs, which mostly saw me take a plateful of whatever Catalina had left out on the counter.
Mornings often saw me tip-toeing over strangers passed out in the living room. I’d rummage through Mum’s purse for lunch money before walking myself to school, where I was quiet and studious, enjoying the structure that was so lacking at home.
Some of my friends thought this lifestyle was cool. Others told their parents about the stoned adults they saw lounging around and were banned from ever visiting again (although some would come over to party themselves, at least leaving their own kids safely tucked up at home).
One time, my best friend and I, aged around seven, went into my parent’s bedroom, where cocaine and rolled-up dollar bills had been left strewn across Mum’s dresser alongside an enormous vase stuffed full of marijuana.
My mother, Vera, I came to realise, simply didn’t have it in her to love anyone but herself. In short, she was the definition of a narcissist
 Seeing the look of horror on my friend’s face, I panicked and flushed it all down the toilet. Later my mother yelled at me for being so reckless.
One of the few ways I could please my mother was to cheerfully oblige when she asked me to roll a joint for her, saying my delicate hands would do a better job than hers.
I lapped up the praise because it was so rarely offered.
This lifestyle made home insecure and unsafe. It’s how, between the ages of three and six, one of the many people coming in and out of it was able to quietly slip into my bedroom and do whatever he wanted to me.
I was too young to understand what was happening, to realise that the abuse was his wrongdoing and not mine. He must have registered the emotional chasm between me and my mother and exploited her disinterest.
It’s heartbreaking, looking back, to realise how accurately he’d read things. Because even when I finally did ask her to make it stop, still she failed to protect me.
A few weeks after I first revealed to her what was happening, I went back to Mum and said I was experiencing discomfort ‘down there’. She didn’t ask for any details, but took me to see a gynaecologist, who expressed concern that my hymen was broken.
Again, that defensive look appeared on her face, her tone one of fury. Her anger, though, was utterly misplaced – directed at the doctor instead of the monster who’d done this to me.
‘Shana recently fell off her bike,’ she barked, which was a lie. ‘Lots of girls break their hymen that way.’
With that, she marched us out of his office, having told the doctor he was being absurd.
Shana’s mother Vera was a beautiful, charming and vivacious woman and an extremely talented violinist. Her dad was the rock star Dick Halligan, who founded the jazz-rock band Blood, Sweat & Tears
It’s unfathomable that any modern medical professional would fail to alert the authorities to such concerns. But my anger at his inaction will always be eclipsed by what my mother said to me while driving us home.
‘Sometimes unpleasant things happen to girls,’ she said. ‘They happened to me. It’s not such a big deal.’
I remember recoiling at her words, which made me feel like I was something she’d just thrown in the bin.
I realised then I should never mention the abuse again; that my own mother had chosen to minimise my pain instead of making it stop.
Her response normalised something that was hurting me physically and emotionally; something that made me feel dirty, and that saw me being used in a way I knew was terribly wrong but didn’t understand and couldn’t stop by myself.
The abuse only ended after my father somehow discovered what was going on a few weeks after that trip to the doctor. I don’t know how he found out, just that one night I heard them having a screaming row downstairs, during which Dad, not normally a shouter, yelled that this man must never set foot in our home again.
My father should, of course, have done more. The police should have been involved and I should immediately have been given the psychological support I needed to help me understand that what happened was never my fault.
But what mattered to me was his response – one of anger, as opposed to Mum’s dismissal. He made the abuse stop.
It took many years of therapy, the unconditional love of my closest girlfriends and my wonderful husband, Eric, and, above all, becoming a mother myself to grasp that what happened to me was his shame – hers too – but most definitely not mine.
On one occasion, when I was about eight, Dad was away and I woke in the middle of the night to see a male friend of Mum’s urinating over my dolls – he was so drunk he’d stumbled into my room, naked, thinking it was the bathroom.
He then proceeded to climb into the bottom bunk of my bunk bed with me, immediately passing out.
This wasn’t the man who had abused me, but I was still terrified. I ran to my mother’s bedroom, where I found her in sexy underwear, suggesting this man might even have been her lover.
Her response? Again, she told me that men behave badly, doing horrible things like this, all the time; that over the years many had touched her inappropriately, but that, unfortunately, being on the receiving end of this sort of thing is simply part of being a girl.
What a dreadful message to give your daughter.
The abuse only ended after my father somehow discovered what was going on a few weeks after that trip to the doctor, says Shana
My parents split when I was nine and I missed Dad desperately. He made me feel of value, that I had a bright future ahead of me thanks to the singing talents he nurtured in me. And after he told his new partner what had happened to me, she urged him to get me the help I needed and I started therapy. I’ve kept going over the years.
Without Dad, Mum continued to project her own insecurities onto me, telling me that when my own looks faded I would be left with nothing.
When I brought my first boyfriend home aged 15, she flirted outrageously with him. I left home to live with him and his parents, who put me up in their spare room. After we split, I went back to Mum a couple of times before moving away for college. The older I got, the more determined I felt to strike out on my own and we were, for the most part, estranged.
I never reported the sexual abuse to the police; by the time I was old enough to realise I could, I also realised the toll that would take on me, having to relive everything with strangers.
In my late teens I started writing my own music. Being the daughter of a music legend was intimidating but I soon found my own voice. I formed my band, Bitter:Sweet, in 2006.
We had great success. Our songs were used in ads for Victoria’s Secret, Cadbury and Range Rover, and appeared in The Devil Wears Prada, Sex And The City and Grey’s Anatomy. I took some time out when I had Otis, so I could focus on him.
Bitter:Sweet has been re-born this year, this time with me as a solo artist.
Over time, I came to fully understand the toll my narcissistic mother had taken on me. This made me scared to become a mother myself. I was terrified that becoming a parent would bring out a monster in me; that I was somehow genetically programmed to be unable to love and protect my own child because I had been so damaged by my own mother’s neglect.
But my husband Eric, chief operating officer of a start-up financial company, who I’ve been with for 13 years now, persuaded me otherwise. We had known each other at school, then met again at a 20-year reunion.
He’s always told me that love flows out of me; that I’m nothing like her. And that I would be a wonderful mother.
Even so, when I became pregnant I felt certain I was going to have a girl and read every book I could find on how to do the best job of raising a daughter – it became an obsession. When I learned I was actually carrying a boy, I sobbed with relief.
For a long time I had wondered whether there was something in me that was difficult to love; whether I was somehow to blame for my mother not caring what was being done to me.
But giving birth to my beautiful son taught me that none of what happened was ever my fault.
From the moment I watched Otis draw his first breath I knew I would lay down my life to protect him. And that if anyone ever did to him what I told my mum was being done to me, they’d need to lock me up before I killed that person with my own bare hands.
My son is the great joy of my life. A sweet angel who sailed into it to show me a kind of love between mother and child that I had never previously been able to imagine. That love has helped me to heal from my horrible past.
News of my mum’s impending death provoked a startling epiphany. Back in March, my older brother, Buddy, called to say that Mum was dying and that I needed to make the two-hour drive over there from my Los Angeles home if I wanted to say goodbye.
She had fallen and broken her hip a few months earlier, which had never properly healed. Aged 88 and already frail, she went into a physical decline.
By this point I had little to do with her. The last meaningful conversation we’d had was when my father died in 2022.
After his funeral she told me he had only ever truly loved two things in life: music and me. Her jealousy over our relationship – we adored each other – loomed large over my childhood.
That was the most selfless thing I ever heard her say.
I realised I wanted more than just the chance to say goodbye to the woman who had brought me into this world. So I held her hand and told her that I forgave her for everything. Even though she tried to resist my words, it felt a relief – as if I was letting go of 51 years of pain and anger.
Finally, I had taken back control of the narrative. And one thing’s for sure; she can’t ever hurt me again.
Shana’s new album, Bitter:Sweet Baby Is Back is out now and can be streamed wherever you get your music.
As told to Rachel Halliwell
