Victim or self-obsessed fantasist? Selfie-loving MP's wife Karen Danczuk claimed this week she poses for sexy snaps because she was abused as a child. Her mother and brothers tell a different story

Yet another revealing selfie: Karen Danczuk last week

When it comes to family history, even the closest of relatives have an alarming habit of recalling the past in vastly different ways. 

Take Karen Danczuk, for example. This week, the 31-year-old wife of Rochdale’s Labour MP Simon Danczuk explained that the constant stream of pouting ‘selfies’ she posts online have their roots in the rapes she suffered from the age of six at the hands of a family friend.

The photographs she takes of herself - many of which offer up an eye-watering view of her ample cleavage - have apparently helped her win back her confidence after a ‘very unhappy childhood’, which left her withdrawn and depressed.

Karen’s story is undoubtedly disturbing, especially given that her 48-year-old politician husband is a vociferous campaigner on child abuse issues and represents a town haunted by tales of child sex exploitation ever since a notorious trafficking ring was uncovered there in 2012.

But, perplexingly, her version of events bears little resemblance to the recollections of other family members, not least her own mother.

This week, 58-year-old Susan Burke said she was stunned to read her youngest daughter’s claims in The Sun newspaper that she was repeatedly raped for years by a family friend who used to sneak into her bedroom and follow her to the bathroom.

This, insists mother-of-five Mrs Burke, is the first she’s ever heard of her daughter’s child abuse allegations.

‘I haven’t a clue who this person is, because we never had a family friend that visited regularly,’ she insists. ‘Karen shared a bedroom with her sister, Claire. I would never have let a man up the stairs.

‘She has never spoken to me about this and it seems strange she’s suddenly decided to tell a newspaper about it rather than go to the police. Why on earth would she do that?’

Mrs Burke claims that many of her daughter’s memories are ‘a figment of her imagination’, an exercise in ‘attention-seeking’ by a young woman who thoroughly enjoys the place in the limelight she has built up since first posting her pouting ‘selfies’ last June.

She expresses astonishment at Karen’s claims that the abuse she allegedly suffered left her struggling with feelings of shame and that she used to cover herself ‘head-to-toe’ in black clothes to avoid attention.

Karen Danczuk's version of events bears little resemblance to the recollections of other family members, not least her own mother. These photos were given to the Mail by her mother

Mrs Burke has provided the Daily Mail with family photographs which reveal a confident, teenage Karen posing for the camera, hand on hip, wearing bright colours, low-cut tops and short skirts — not to mention the same ‘come-hither’ pout she produces for her present-day ‘selfies’.

Defending her version of events, Karen Danczuk told me this week that while she dressed normally for much of her teens, at her lowest point in 2008 — when she would have been around 24 — she wore black because of depression. She also stood firmly by her claims of abuse.

So what is the truth about the ‘unhappy’ childhood of a woman who has, almost overnight, become one of the most talked-about wives in politics? One thing is certain, the Burke family are at war over her allegations.

While her mother dismisses them, her older sister, 35-year-old mother-of-five Claire, has rallied to Karen’s side, sending her a text message this week that read: ‘Feel so useless that I wasn’t able to protect you like big sis should.’

One brother says these claims are 'disgusting' 

Meanwhile, Karen’s 73-year-old father, Martin, a former taxi driver and Rochdale borough councillor who separated from his wife 20 years ago, told the Mail: ‘We’ve always known Karen was very troubled and seemed to be carrying a burden she was unable to talk about.

‘I wasn’t there at the time and I wish I had been. I know Karen is still in therapy, and all I can do as her father is give her as much love and support as possible.’

Two of her older brothers, Michael, 36, and Christopher, 33, however, have sided with their mother, telling the Mail that Karen’s account of their childhood in the end-of-terrace house they shared in the small Lancashire town of Middleton, bears no resemblance to what they remember.

A third brother, 39-year-old Steven, who was employed as Simon Danczuk’s campaign manager before he was elected in 2010, has been estranged from the family for the past six years following another family schism involving Karen.

‘What she is saying about our childhood is disgusting,’ says her youngest brother Christopher Burke, an administrator at Oldham Hospital. ‘We had a lovely childhood. Our mum was at home with us. Our dad worked hard. We got taken to school every day in the car.

‘I can’t understand why she’s saying these things. We’ve had to put up with the publicity around those ridiculous pictures she posts of herself — and now this. It’s the final straw.’

Not so shy: Karen Danczuk says she hid 'head to toe' in black clothes as a child. These photos, given to the Mail by her mother, suggest otherwise

Christopher says that while family resources were undoubtedly stretched because of the number of mouths to feed, their parents did their best to cope.

The children were taken swimming every Wednesday after school. There were karate and tennis lessons and their Catholic father took them to church on Sundays.

They sat down to eat as a family every evening and there was a party for every child on their birthday. Every year, the Burkes went on holiday to a caravan park in Colwyn Bay in North Wales, or to Galway in Ireland from where their father’s family originally came.

‘We had a completely normal upbringing and all of us are really shocked by what she’s been saying,’ says Christopher’s brother, Michael.

‘I wish she’d make her mind up — one minute she had a wonderful childhood, the next it was terrible. She seems to change her mind every day.’

A source close to Karen says Christopher and Michael’s accounts are ‘riddled with inaccuracies’ and that she no longer has relationships with either her mother or her brothers.

It was alleged Danczuk hit her, but they deny it 

Karen herself told me this week: ‘My mum never loved me. I’m upset that she’s giving the impression that I wasn’t sexually abused as a child. This is the main reason I haven’t spoken to her for years.’

At one stage, she said, she was abused in the bath while her mother was downstairs.

‘It’s my view and also that of my therapist that my mother must have been aware of this abuse at the time,’ says Karen. ‘It’s for this reason that I find it hard to forgive or have a relationship with her. ‘I don’t have a close relationship with my mum. She’s never kissed me or said she loved me, and it’s been impossible for me to speak to her about what happened.’

The truth is, no one can ever really know what goes on behind closed doors, especially in families as dysfunctional as the one Karen claims to have grown up in.

Besides the allegations of abuse and an upbringing devoid of love and affection, Karen also claims her mother showed little interest in her education and didn’t come to see her perform in plays.

Like her siblings, she attended local Catholic schools, St John Fisher Primary and Cardinal Langley High School in Rochdale. Like them, she also left school at 16, with a handful of GCSEs.

After school, her jobs were varied. She worked on the checkout at Asda and at the Rochdale branch of Carcraft, a second-hand car supermarket chain. She also worked with a local solicitor, thanks to her father, who arranged for her to join a council-run training scheme.

Susan Burke claims that many of her daughter’s memories are ‘a figment of her imagination’. Karen Danczuk is pictured above

There were boyfriends, says her mother, who talks of young men with ‘flashy cars’, and a longer-term partner called Lloyd who worked with Karen at Carcraft.

‘Lloyd had good prospects,’ says Mrs Burke. ‘He had a stable job and a few properties and drove very posh cars. They were together for quite a bit. They were planning on moving in together, but then she met Simon.’

Karen was a Labour Party activist, helping out her councillor father, when she met Simon Danczuk, who’s 16 years her senior, in 2007. By her own account, their eyes met across a crowded room at Rochdale Labour Club when he was still a prospective parliamentary candidate for the party — and also married.

The MP has two children with his first wife, Sonia, who divorced him in 2009 on the grounds of his adultery — just five months after Karen gave birth to their first son Milton, now five. Their second son, Sebastian, now four, was already on the way.

It was around this time that the Burke family became engulfed in a huge row centring on the pair’s relationship, a row which spilled into the public domain when seven members of Rochdale Labour Party called for an investigation into Danczuk, who had yet to become an MP.

Their request was based on unsubstantiated allegations that Danczuk had hit Karen during a holiday to Spain — something both he and Karen have vehemently denied on several occasions, although they admit they did row.

She auctioned herself off as a Valentine's date 

In an interview with the Rochdale Observer in January 2009, Danczuk claimed: ‘We went away and had a holiday argument — as people do. We came back and some time later a couple of malicious emails started going around saying that domestic violence had taken place. It’s nonsense and completely unfounded.’

Karen added her own denial, saying that the claims were ‘very offensive’.

In fact, the Mail has discovered that these ‘malicious’ emails were sent by Karen’s brother, Steven, who at the time was working as Danczuk’s campaign manager.

And according to Mrs Burke and Christopher Burke, Steven had helped organise emergency flights for Karen to return home from Alicante in Spain without Danczuk.

While Danczuk and Karen denied any violence took place, her mother and brothers insist she called in a state of hysteria claiming the argument had become physical.

‘She was screaming and crying down the phone,’ says her mother, who insists she saw ‘grip marks’ on her daughter’s arms. So, too, does Christopher.

Her mother adds: ‘But, when she came back, she denied everything and called us liars for suggesting that Simon had harmed her. It split the whole family.’ A source close to the Danczuks told the Mail that allegations of domestic abuse were ‘absolute nonsense’ and that there were no bruises, although the source admitted Karen’s father paid for his daughter to fly home from Alicante early. Simon Danczuk later repaid the cost of the flight.

The photographs Karen Danczuk takes of herself - many of which offer up an eye-watering view of her ample cleavage - have apparently helped her win back her confidence

Under normal circumstances, this sorry affair might have swiftly been forgotten. But thanks to the emails sent out by Steven Burke, who then immediately resigned as Danczuk’s campaign manager, the incident was far from over.

The seven Rochdale Labour Party members who had called for the MP to be investigated were accused by Danczuk of ‘bullying’ and were themselves made the subject of a disciplinary hearing.

Five were later expelled from the party for circulating false and malicious allegations against Danczuk. Two were suspended.

The Burke family, meanwhile, found themselves pulled in opposite directions. Mrs Burke claims that, having resigned as campaign manager, Steven eventually cut off all contact with the family after the others tried to patch up their relationship with Karen. ‘I lost my eldest son over it,’ she says. ‘And now Karen says all these things about us. I just don’t know what the truth is any more.’

The entire family — bar Steven — attended the Danczuks’ wedding at Rochdale Town Hall in May 2012.

But if it seemed the bitter legacy left behind by past rows might be forgotten, Karen’s rising profile has alienated some members of her family anew.

Her public profile has grown steadily ever since she started posting hundreds of ‘selfies’ on her Twitter account last year.

She describes herself as ‘Queen of the Selfie’, adding on her Twitter page: ‘I was a caged bird, then I learnt to fly. Came from nothing, now riding the waves.’

And, by anybody’s standards, Karen Danczuk has undoubtedly done well for herself.

But while she can hardly be blamed for being aspirational, her extraordinary self-promotion — and what her own mother describes as her ‘t*t pix’— has proved too much for some.

Former Tory MP Louise Mensch has described Karen as ‘Westminster’s most embarrassing wife’, while last October, journalist Janet Street-Porter took her to task on ITV’s Loose Women, asking: ‘What kind of role model are you offering a 15-year-old girl in Rochdale?’

Such criticisms appear to have been water off a duck’s back.

In December, Karen began selling signed and Chanel-scented bikini shots of herself on eBay at £10 a pop. At Christmas, she posed in a raunchy festive costume for The Sun beneath the headline: ‘Westminster WAG Mrs Selfie becomes Mrs Elfie.’ And last week, Karen auctioned herself off as a Valentine’s date via Twitter, asking for secret bids to be emailed to her.

‘I’d had so many offers from people asking to take me out on a date for Valentine’s so I thought I might as well make something out of it and raise money for charity,’ she said.

She also posted yet another photo of herself online, trying on a gaudy red corset in a lingerie shop.

Given her increasing public profile, it perhaps comes as no surprise then to learn that she set up her own company, Danczuk Media Ltd last August. At the end of last year there were also reports that she had hired PR firm Ginger Comms to represent her, a company which promises ‘mass media exposure’ for ‘people in the glare of the public spotlight’.

If some regard her as a political liability, then her husband — whose book about Cyril Smith prompted the Government inquiry into historical allegations of child sex abuse at Westminster — is supporting her. ‘So proud of my wife for speaking out about her child abuse today,’ Simon Danczuk tweeted earlier this week.

Others have criticised her for not going straight to the police with her allegations, and despite The Sun claiming Karen has already named her abuser, this was incorrect.

A source close to the Danczuks told the Mail: ‘It’s part of a process of coming to terms with what happened to her and rebuilding her confidence. She is being supported by the police and will be naming her abuser to them some time soon.’

A Greater Manchester Police spokesman confirmed that ‘specially trained officers are continuing to offer support to the victim while she considers what course of action she would like to take next.’

Having opened a very personal can of worms in the most public manner possible, Karen Danczuk’s sorry tale is unlikely to end here.