I've had to tell my son his father is the Lottery rapist: The victim of the £4.5m jackpot winner exposed this week as a benefit-fiddling rapist tells her story

When Edward Putman was given a cheque for £4.5million by Camelot staff, there were no cameras present to record the moment for posterity, no overflowing bottle of bubbly and celebratory press conference.

Instead, the 46-year-old unemployed builder from Hertfordshire opted for 'no publicity' when he scooped the lottery jackpot in September 2009, a decision that seemed unremarkable at the time.

After all, no one would have guessed that behind all the smiles and handshakes, Putman was actually a brutal rapist who had every reason to keep his good fortune secret.

Just a year earlier, another rapist and lottery winner, Iorworth Hoare, had been forced to hand over a slice of his fortune to his victim after she bravely sued him.

No doubt Putman feared that he, too, would be made to part with some of his millions if anyone made the connection between his violent rape of a 17-year-old girl in 1991 and his lottery windfall.

But there was something else — something even more sickening — that Putman must have dreaded coming out and which the Mail can reveal today.

The young teenager he raped and assaulted was pregnant with his child at the time of the attack.

Despite her horrendous injuries, her unborn child survived. Today he is a strapping 19-year-old, described by his mother, whom we shall call Clare, as the image of Putman.

He has never received a penny in support from his biological father and is now, along with his mother, eligible to claim for compensation from Putman, whose cover was finally blown this week after he was exposed in court as a benefits cheat.

Unlike the woman he attacked, Putman has wanted for nothing in recent years.

He lives in upmarket Kings Langley in Hertfordshire in a £600,000 home.

Dozens of cars are parked on land attached to the house and he is also said to have purchased a £466,000 home in nearby Hemel Hempstead.

'Finding out that he won the lottery is like some kind of sick joke,' says 37-year-old Clare, who cannot be fully identified for legal reasons.

'I struggled to raise my son on my own for many years. I didn't want to claim maintenance in case he found me.

'I've always said that my son is my “silver lining”, but I will never ever be able to put what happened behind me because I am reminded of it every day. He changed my life for ever.

'It has been incredibly difficult for my son over the years, learning to cope since I told him when he was ten that his father is a rapist.

'At the very least, he deserves something to give him a start in life, to help him. But it's not about the money — I don't care if it ends up going to charity. It's about the principle.'

Clare, who now shares a £250,000 home with her partner and their other children, was just 16 years old and estranged from her family after a troubled childhood when she met unemployed Putman, who lived near her in Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, in 1991.

'I was really down on my luck,' Clare says. 'I was alone in the world and trying to work and feed myself.'

Penniless and vulnerable, she moved into the spare room of a three-bedroom house her friend shared with her boyfriend and their young son.

Putman, then 25, was one of a group of unemployed men who hung around the house. He drove a Ford Sierra and had a penchant for whisky and extra-strong lager.

'He had a real baby-face,' she says now. 'He could be funny, but most of the time he was awful. I don't even know how I got involved with him.'

But she did begin dating him and, looking back, she recalls how he slowly isolated her from her friends. Once sure of his hold over her, he became a psychological bully and constantly told her she was worthless.

'He was incredibly controlling,' Clare says, 'but I didn't know anything about men. I was so young and naive. It was hard to get away from him because he lived in the same road.'

Putman's behaviour towards his girlfriend became increasingly disturbing, especially if she tried to avoid him or physically spurned him.

She recalls one occasion when she went out to use a pay phone nearby and stood outside, waiting for a man inside to finish his call.

'Eddy was in his car, revving his engine,' she recalls. 'I thought he was going to mow me down. I literally dragged the man out of the phone box so I could get inside as his car mounted the kerb and drove at me.'

On another occasion when she fell asleep on the sofa, Putman emptied the contents of the kitchen bin over her.

'He beat me up once simply for going to a party,' she adds. 'Another time he locked me out in the garden at his dad's home and stood there laughing at me through the window. He liked to play tricks on people.'

Putman would also pressurise her to have sex: 'I had a very difficult childhood and I wasn't interested in physical relationships. But it was what he wanted, and if I didn't comply, he didn't like it.

'I was a completely different person then. I was frightened. I thought I would be stuck with him for ever.'

At the time she met Putman, he was living with his elderly father Arthur after separating from his previous partner Gail. The couple had a son, Sam, now 26.

'He used to drive past where Gail lived and point out her house,' Clare recalls. 'He'd threateningly say: “I'm going to get her one day.” I took this to mean in the violent sense.'

Putman's family was large and somewhat dysfunctional. He is the youngest of ten siblings and half-siblings, his father Arthur having had five children with his first wife Vera.

Within a week of Vera's death from an aneurysm in 1963, Arthur had married Sheila, Putman's mother. A rift between the two women's children endures to this day.

Putman, who left school at 16, told Clare that his mother had died when he was young and that he'd been raised by his sisters — although one relative this week claimed that was not true and that Putman's mother is still alive.

'He always felt wronged by everyone around him,' said one female relative. 'Everything was always everybody else's fault.'

At the time of the rape, Clare had separated from Putman and refused to see him. She had recently discovered she was pregnant and he wasn't happy.

'He was becoming more violent and I was trying to protect the baby,' she says. 'When I refused to see him, he used to stand out in the street and call my name.'

But one evening, Putman opened the door of her home from the outside by putting his hand through a pane of glass beside the frame.

'He was on something and high,' she says, 'I was in the front room with my friend, her boyfriend and their young son, and he came in and started being verbally abusive to them. In the end, they left the room, saying they were going to bed. I didn't want them to leave me, but they went. They were frightened of him.

'They didn't get me any help that night. They both sat tight in their room for four hours. They heard me screaming but did nothing.'

At first Putman verbally abused his pregnant former girlfriend and flicked cigarette ash at her. But when she tried to run to her friend's bedroom, he pushed her into the little boy's empty room. His victim can still vividly recall the Thomas The Tank Engine wallpaper and bedding as she was being attacked.

'At first I screamed, but he was punching my ears and my head. He said every time I screamed he would punch me again. It happened about 20 more times. I really thought my head was going to cave in.'

'My son is part of the worst and the best thing that ever happened to me. He is brilliant. He is a gentleman and nothing like his father in personality.'

Putman's victim

She recalls, too, that when Putman tried to force himself upon her, he was, at first, physically unable to. As he became increasingly frustrated and angry, she tried to encourage him to leave by humouring him.

'I told him: “It's all right. It's just one of those things. You're just drunk. Go home,” ' she recalls.

'I knew I needed help but if I'd shouted out, I think he might have killed me.'

At first, it seemed Putman would leave. 'But at the bottom of the stairs he turned around and came back,' she says. 'It started all over again from scratch. I thought I was going to die.'

When he finally left after raping her two hours later — leaving a scrawled note of apology for what he had done — she put the chain across the door before running into her friend's room and begging for help.

An ambulance was called and medics treated her bleeding head and ears as well as the bruises on her thighs.

Police appealed for Putman to give himself up and he handed himself in two days later.

He was given bail but soon found himself back in a cell after trying to persuade the boyfriend of Clare's friend to tell police that the entire story had been fabricated.

In court, Putman smirked, tutted and smiled throughout his trial, says Clare. But the jury believed her and found him guilty of rape. He was given a seven-year jail sentence.

When he was released from HMP Woodhill in Milton Keynes, the police gave Clare a Home Office alarm because she was so terrified that he would come to find her.

Putman temporarily returned to his former partner Gail. Now aged 51, she told the Mail this week that she had also been violently assaulted by Putman during their 15-year on-off relationship and that he had paid her less than £200 in maintenance when their son was a child.

The former support worker for children with eating disorders, who lives in Borehamwood, Hertfordshire, added: 'I can't tell you how many times Edward smashed my house and me up. He once beat me to a pulp.'

She claims that Putman was arrested and charged, but that after being separated from her son and put in a women's refuge, she changed her story to police so she could be reunited with her little boy.

'I was prosecuted for perverting the course of justice and got 28 days,' she says. 'The experience destroyed me and had a lasting impact on my family.'

Putman's own family have undoubtedly also suffered. This week, several of his siblings told the Mail that they wanted nothing to do with him or that they hadn't seen him for decades, despite living nearby.

In June 1997, not long after Putman's release from prison, his 74-year-old father, a passionate rail enthusiast, committed suicide by throwing himself under a train while suffering from depression.

The long shadow Putman has cast over so many people's lives continued this week when Clare took the difficult decision to sit down her adult son and tell him there was a photograph of his biological father in the paper. It was the first time the lad had ever seen him.

'He's been quite tearful about it,' Clare says. 'When he was about ten, and asking about his dad, I explained that usually babies are made when a man and woman love each other but that his father and I didn't love each other.

'As he got older, I said that his father was not nice to ladies. He worked it out in the end. He was so angry. He wanted to kill him.

'I can't imagine how he feels. He's got his whole life ahead of him and I don't want him to think he is tainted by any of this. I was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

'My son is part of the worst and the best thing that ever happened to me. He is brilliant. He is a gentleman and nothing like his father in personality.

'We've talked about the money, and I think he feels like me, that while we don't want his money, it's the principle. He should have to give both his sons something, even if they pass it on to charity.'

Money, of course, will never make up for the agony Edward Putman has caused to those around him.

But at least now his win is public knowledge, they will have the chance to fight for the share they so richly deserve.

* The Mail is to make a donation to a charity of Clare's choice in return for this interview.