by Girl A
The fight suddenly went out of Pino, and a look of panic came over his face. He told us to hide and so Emma and I ran into the other bedroom. When we came out and crept downstairs a few minutes later, neither of the men was there and the kitchen window was wide open. The police had gone too.
I was glad the police had turned up, but scared as well. I thought of the trouble it might bring: the questions, the shame, the recriminations from Daddy and Emma if I dared say anything. And, of course, if the police got involved they’d get in touch with Mum and Dad. And they couldn’t know.
They must never get to know what I’d got myself into.
We were still worried we’d get done by the police so we climbed out of the same window. Once we were outside, we needed to climb over a fence, and the man next door moved his wheelie bin so we could clamber up and away. I’ve wondered since whether it was him who’d heard all the shouting and called the police.
I didn’t have a phone, of course, and Emma’s was out of credit, so we walked to a local community centre where she asked to use the phone so she could call Daddy.
When he drove up he went mad at me. He kept screaming at me for supposedly betraying him by not letting Pino sleep with me. I’d defied him and I was going to pay for it.
‘I’ll have to pay him back,’ he shouted. ‘Am I really going to have to stay with you every time to make sure you do what you’re supposed to do?’
When he dropped us back at Emma’s he said he’d see me again soon. He said it with such menace that as I went inside, I knew I was as trapped and as helpless as ever. I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I’d tried to stand up for myself, but nothing had changed.
* * *
In just a few days I’d fallen into a depraved world I’d never known existed. Now, with my wish for rebellion crushed, I was reduced to thinking that the only way to survive was to just give in and try to close my mind to the horror of what they were doing to me.
At fifteen, and still a kid despite my pretence at being grown-up and worldly, I really couldn’t escape. Daddy and his friends knew exactly where I lived, and kept making it clear that they knew. He’d already threatened me with all sorts of violence: to kill me, to rape my sisters, to burn down our family home. I convinced myself they could do all of those things because of what they’d already done. If they could rape a sobbing teenager without a pang of conscience, murder was only a small step away.
I couldn’t believe that all this had happened to me in just a few weeks.
To Mum and Dad it must have just seemed like I was off on an act of teenage rebellion, using the start of the summer holidays to stay at a friend’s house in defiance of them. They thought it best to back off and leave me to it. They had no idea of the misery I was going through each and every day I spent away from them.
Maybe they were reassured when I kept popping back, even if it was mostly only to have my washing done. Mum must have thought it a sign that her eldest hadn’t completely abandoned the family, that there were still ties between us.
Emma, though, usually came with me, not wanting me to go there alone. She’d always be careful to come across as my big buddy, chatting with my parents as if everything was fine and normal. On the days she didn’t come, she’d warn me not to say anything.
I wanted to tell Mum and Dad the truth, that I was a prisoner. They could see that I was dirty and dishevelled, angry, and they came to hate the increasingly foul language I’d come out with whenever I saw them, but they didn’t know why. They had no idea. When I got mad at them, they didn’t know to look behind the shouting to wonder what was making me that way.
Those times at home should have been brief moments of respite, but they weren’t. Rather than trusting my parents to help me, I was taking everything out on them, so much so that by the time I’d leave they were, unsurprisingly, sick of the sight of me.
Usually, we’d just bicker, with me screaming such vile abuse they’d come close to throwing me out of the door. Most times, though, I’d storm out and head, like a lemming over a cliff, back to the house that had once promised freedom, but was now just a staging post for degradation and violence.
I was desperate to tell them what was happening to me.
What held me back was my fear of what the gang might do to them if they found out I’d told them. And, if I’m honest, part of me blamed Mum and Dad for not realising there was something terribly, terribly wrong in their daughter’s life. I couldn’t understand why they couldn’t see the hold Emma had over me. They didn’t seem to suspect anything. Now, I realise that she’d managed to pull the wool over their eyes too. She could convince anyone of anything.
Chapter Nine
Nowhere to Turn
It was around this time that I realised that the Glen’s Vodka Daddy gave me was becoming my only friend. I’d drink it either neat or with cola. I came to hate the taste so much that I’d want to be sick even before it was poured, but I knew that if I drank it, drank it quickly, things wouldn’t be so bad. I wouldn’t be so scared, not quite so hurt.
The vodka meant I could at least forget. Even when it was happening, if I was drunk it felt somehow as if it wasn’t real, that I wasn’t actually being raped, that the body being violated was someone else’s, and that I, Hannah, wasn’t actually there.
Before falling prey to Daddy I’d drink with my friends to get happily drunk. It was fun with them. Now, each shot of vodka became its own anaesthetic. And the quicker I could drink each shot, the sooner I could embrace its numbing effect.
But, deep within me, in the hours and days after the time with Pino, I started to feel stronger. A new rebellion was building.
* * *
The day of my escape from Daddy, 6 August 2008, began like so many before it: waking up late at Harry’s house, realising that the nightmare still had hold of me, and in the evening being taken by Emma to the Balti House.
Daddy wasn’t there that night, and I felt a sense of relief as Emma and I sat on the stairs – hidden from the view of any customers who might be calling in – drinking straight out of the bottle. Emma had produced yet another bottle of cash-and-carry vodka, but it was me that drank the most. She just sipped it as she always did, ruthless, anxious to stay sober while her latest victim drank to forget. She must have reasoned that it was easier that way: less trouble. I couldn’t understand that about her, because in my mind the vodka made the horror of each night that much easier to bear – I still couldn’t bring myself to believe that she actually enjoyed all this, as she’d told Courtney in the car.
Although Daddy wasn’t there, Chef was, and he loved to touch. He couldn’t really speak much English: just the odd word or phrase to get by on. When it came to sex, he used the words: ‘jiggy jiggy’ was a favourite, so was ‘puddy’.
Now, he came out of the kitchen and stood over me. His hands started roaming, just as he liked them to, heading south towards my ‘puddy’.
He was saying, ‘Do you want sex?’ He wouldn’t stop, and he wouldn’t stop trying to reach into my pants. I said I’d ring my dad, and when he still didn’t stop I punched him in the face.
I hit him so hard he reeled back on his heels.
A second later, I heard the crack as his hand slapped the side of my face. Then he slapped me a second time. He was going mad, standing right in front of me and calling me a slag.
It was chaos. My cheek was stinging as Emma began dragging me away from the stairs and out into the empty restaurant, heading towards the front door. Then Immy raced out and caught us up. He was angry, but I was angrier still.
Looking around for anything I could get my hands on, I grabbed a big jar of mayonnaise and threw it at Chef, catching him in the throat. Then I started kicking and punching the glass front to the counter. In the end, I hit it so hard I put my fist through it. I’ve still got the scars.
I could hear Chef screaming at Immy to call the police, but the man who’d taken me as a ‘treat’ barely a fortnight earlier seemed suddenly anxious. ‘No
, no,’ he shouted. ‘We’ll call Daddy.’
Just the name was enough to propel me out of the door. I ran into the night, with Emma behind. We ran across the road and then slowed to walking pace, victim and recruiter, using the Morrison’s car park as a cut-through. I know I was bleary from the vodka, but it felt like only moments later that a blue police van screeched around the corner and pulled up beside us.
Immy, it turned out, had been talked out of ringing Daddy and had instead dialled 999. It was something he’d come to regret, but not then, not in the summer of 2008.
Two police officers, one a man, the other a woman, both glaring at the drunken teenager in front of them, took only moments to arrest me but left Emma to slope off. They had to half lift me into the back of the van before slamming the door shut.
As the van headed out of town towards Rochdale, I looked dully at the two bobbies through the mesh bars, wondering what would happen to me next.
They parked at the back of the station and led me inside, first to the front desk, then to a cell, having taken all my belongings – my rings, bag and laces. ‘We can’t interview you until you’ve sobered up,’ I was told.
Quite suddenly I felt safe. Yes, I was scared, because I’d never been in a police station before, let alone a cell, but I felt a sense of relief that, finally, I was somewhere that was completely out of Daddy’s and Emma’s reach: a place of refuge they couldn’t deny me because, miraculously, I was there already. I wasn’t at Emma’s, I wasn’t at the Balti House, and I wasn’t at a flat being abused by Daddy and his friends. I was behind the safe, welcoming gates of a police station.
I slept, or tried to sleep, beneath the blanket they gave me. It was around 1 a.m. that the cell door opened and I was taken to an interview room.
But then the old fear came back to me: I was scared – not so much of what might happen to me here at the station, but scared of everything else: of what my dad would say about it all, of what my mum would say, and, most of all, of what Daddy would do to me if he ever got to me again.
It was at that point, somewhere between the cell door clanging shut behind me and the tape recorder going on, that I decided I really had to get help. If I didn’t, I’d be trapped in this world for ever.
I had to tell them what had been happening to me. It felt that this was my only chance. No matter how painful, how embarrassing, I had to do what Mum and Dad had always told me: to tell the truth, so things could be right again. If I didn’t, what would the gang do to me once I’d left the station? I’d be right back to doing what they wanted me to do.
The realisation was like a bright light going on in my mind. I was in a police station, after all. They’d look after me, and my family would, too, once they knew the truth.
But, first of all, there was my dad to cope with. He’d arrived at the station with a friend, bleary-eyed and mad at the news that his daughter had been arrested for criminal damage and thrown into a cell. He glared at me as he came into the interview room, then shook his head and sat on the chair beside me. It was obvious that he wanted to be anywhere else than there.
I remember how warm the room was, and how bare – just a table, some chairs, and the tape recorder on the table. I could feel the heat building up on my brow, the first trickle of perspiration on my palms.
The officer conducting the interview was about thirty and was clearly expecting a routine procedure, ending with a charge and a referral to court. He wasn’t aggressive, just methodical and probably a little bored, carefully reading out the statements of both Chef and Immy. They were lies, of course, the gist of what they were saying being that I’d walked into the takeaway and randomly smashed the counter.
I think he expected me to say something like, ‘Yes, that’s what I did. And I’m sorry.’
But this wasn’t going to be the easy shift for him that night.
‘No,’ I said. ‘That’s wrong.’
So he asked me why that was wrong, and why I’d done it.
I think I paused for a few seconds, wondering how on earth I could say it. There were no tears because suddenly I could see that I was about to be set free. But I remember looking down at the table, not wanting to look at the uniformed officer in front of me and even more desperate to avoid the expectant gaze of my father beside me.
‘Because they raped me,’ I said.
Across the table from me the officer looked astonished, alarmed even; as if he had no idea how he should react. He then collected himself, refocused and said sternly, ‘You do know that’s a serious accusation you’re making, don’t you?’
My dad has told me since that he went into shock, and I guess the policeman had a similar reaction, with his mind still on the criminal damage. I started to go through what had been happening to me – the rapes, the car journeys, the threats – but every time I paused, the officer tried to bring the conversation back to the Balti House counter. As if the counter mattered!
It angered me that he didn’t seem to believe me, presumably thinking I was making it up to avoid the embarrassment of going to court. I didn’t go into all the detail, though I did name Daddy and I did say he’d forced me to sleep with other people as well. I thought that would be enough to convince them.
Moments later, the officer stood to usher out the father of the strange, wild teenager in front of him so he could speak to him in private. Dad, whose gaze had shifted towards the ceiling, looked suddenly old as he pushed back his chair and went with him.
I could hear only muffled voices as they talked about me in the corridor outside. When they returned, the officer said he would pass on my allegations of rape and trafficking – it was the first time I’d heard that word – to a different team of officers so they could investigate. But he still charged me.
I learned later that the officer had told Dad he believed me, saying he’d heard of similar complaints from other girls in the past. All of them connected to Tasty Bites and the Balti House.
What neither Dad nor I knew then was that the latest of these complaints had been made no more than twenty-four hours earlier.
We were a few paces away from the station when Dad turned to me and said: ‘You do know that what you’re saying is incredibly serious?’
‘Yes, Dad, I know,’ I mumbled.
And then, as much to himself as to me, he continued, ‘Why didn’t you tell us, if it’s true?’
* * *
It was an uncomfortable journey home. I was tired and hung over. Dad was in a space somewhere between disbelief and a kind of mourning for the innocent daughter he’d once known. Through the fog, I was trying to think about what would happen with the police, my parents and, most of all, with Daddy and Emma. I was glad that I’d spoken up, but beneath that was the thought I dreaded most: what if nothing comes of it? And what will Daddy do to me, or worse, to my family, then?
Mum was in tears, utterly distraught, as I went to bed in the half-light of dawn.
I should have felt safe back in my own room, with my brothers and sisters around me, but actually I didn’t. I spent most of the rest of that night wondering whether any of the gang – Daddy, Immy, Chef, Mulla and others – would turn up at my home.
At the same time, Mum and Dad were coming to terms with the knowledge that I’d been raped, but they still had no idea how often and how violently. Nor did they know of Emma’s role in the abuse. In their minds, it was just Daddy who had done those things to me.
The next day, the police came around lunchtime, asking what evidence I had to back up my account. I looked blankly at them for a moment, but then thought about the knickers I had stuffed under my bed at Harry’s house.
I’d not been back home with my washing, so I realised that some of them must still have had Daddy’s DNA on, and maybe even Immy’s. I said I thought there were three pairs there. The police said they’d go round and collect them, but I went instead, because I didn’t want the embarrassment – or the possible conflict with Emma their presence would create.
That a
fternoon, I went back to Harry’s, frightened, wondering whether anyone had latched on to me being a ‘grass’. Upstairs, I scrabbled under the bed and found three pairs of knickers: a pink thong, a blue pair and a green and pink pair.
Emma was in the hallway as I came downstairs, but she didn’t guess what I’d been doing. Fortunately, I’d stuffed the knickers into my jacket pocket. She insisted on coming home with me, but she had no idea about the evidence I was carrying in my pocket.
When we arrived, I gave Mum the rest of my washing in the kitchen and, upstairs, mortified, I handed her the knickers, scrunched up in my hands so she wouldn’t see the stains.
Later, she put them into Tesco bags and put them on top of a kitchen unit for safe keeping. They’d be there for a week before the police finally called at Harry’s house for them – only to discover they were with Mum.
The day after I’d gone to the police they arrested Daddy. He admitted having sex with Emma but said he’d thought she was sixteen. He completely denied having sex with me. What did the police do? They let him go, saying they’d be in touch. I didn’t know it then, but it would be another two months before they arrested Immy.
* * *
Once I had got home with the knickers, I had wanted to stay, I really did. But I was terrified in case any of Daddy’s mates tried to come after me in revenge for having told on him. I also had Emma digging her nails into me as we sat on the sofa, talking to my parents.
She rang for a taxi, all casual, and told me to get my things. I was frightened to go, and frightened not to in case something happened to my family. In the end, like a zombie, I packed a few things and we set off back to Harry’s house – the last place in the world I should be.
Mum and Dad made no move to stop me, resigned to this latest departure because they thought I’d only been raped by Daddy and Immy and would now be safe.