by Girl A
Emma was pimping me like a prostitute in a niche market, a prostitute for paedophiles. She had such control that she didn’t even need to pay me. She could just hawk me around, night after night, and charge them for raping me in their seedy flats.
I came to realise that Emma had recruited me to something evil, but it was something I couldn’t fight off. The crucial thing for her was that I’d fallen into the trap of going to live at Harry’s place. Once I was there, she immediately knew she could use me and convince me there was no escape. She was powerful enough on her own, but with Daddy, and then Tariq, behind her, she seemed to me to be invincible.
I’d become a piece of merchandise for her to sell. She was constantly checking on me to make sure I’d always obey: I was so submissive towards her that I’d even find myself apologising to her whenever I burst into tears.
So much of her hardness had come from what I sensed was being born into a family that didn’t care for her. None of them had had a job in generations, and her mum wasn’t bothered whether she stayed with her or at Harry’s. Emma used to have one of her little sisters over for a couple of nights a week, and their mum would drop her off. Sometimes she’d stay for tea. I’d be sitting there, thinking: Surely she must know what her daughter’s up to?
But if she did, she didn’t seem to care.
My depression and desperation were made deeper by the fact that going to the police had made no difference to my life whatsoever. The disclosures I’d given, together with the long and detailed video interview, were now a distant memory and looked like a huge, sick joke. There was no rescue. There was no protection. I’ve already told them, I thought, but I’m still here and it’s still happening to me. I was once again beyond rescue – and pretty much beyond reason.
There was only Emma and the gang.
* * *
I turned to the only refuge I could find – alcohol. At first Emma had used the vodka to make me more malleable; now it was me who was desperate for its raw edge, drinking it as quickly as I could to numb the horrors of each night, and hope they would stay somewhere near the surface rather than searing a path into my soul.
I’d sometimes be so drunk that I’d forget where I’d been or precisely how many paedophiles had forced themselves on me. Only the jagged pain I’d feel the next morning would remind me of the abuse I’d suffered.
September brought with it the start of the new school term – the year I was supposed to be doing my GCSEs.
Visits to Mum and Dad’s were becoming more infrequent, but the day before school started I went home to collect my uniform. As usual, I felt they didn’t really want me around, so I only stayed for a few minutes.
There’d be no lift to the school gates from Dad. Instead, I caught the bus from Harry’s place with Ricky and Hayley’s old flame, Wayne. Emma was still in bed as we set off.
It seemed so strange to see the boys in school uniform again, and even stranger when we got to school. Hayley was there, and we said hi, but it was different. Everyone else seemed so happy and so normal. All I could think was, None of these kids has any idea what’s happened to me these summer holidays.
And how could they know? How could they even guess? For them there might have been a bit of teenage fumbling; for me, it had been first one rape in a bedroom over a takeaway, and after that so many more that I’d actually lost count. Forty? Fifty? I had no idea. All I knew was that my life was ruined and there was no way I could ever fit in somewhere that was so achingly, wonderfully normal.
The first lesson of term was Art, and I sat at the back next to Wayne. He lived around the corner from Harry’s place, and because he was there so often, he’d got to know how Emma was using me.
Away from Ricky now, and far enough away from the other kids in the class to whisper unheard as he drew, he started to try and help me.
‘You’ve got to tell someone, Hannah,’ he said, leaning towards me. ‘Tell one of the teachers and they’ll sort it out. They’ll get you away from Emma, honest they will.’ He looked up to check the teacher wasn’t looking, then continued: ‘You act like she’s your mate, but she’s not. She’s just a fat bitch and she’s using you, Hannah. You’ve got to get away.’
Somewhere inside I felt myself trying to respond, trying to understand the sense of what he was saying, but I couldn’t. I just wiped away a tear and carried on drawing.
He kept on at me for the entire lesson, telling me I was a victim and that if I could tell someone it would all be over. ‘All those men need locking up, Hannah. Go on, tell someone.’ All I could find to say in reply was a petulant: ‘You just don’t understand! Now leave me alone.’
Later that morning, Miss Crabtree, the mentor for kids the school thought were struggling, called me into her office. ‘Hannah,’ she said quietly, ‘we’ve heard from the police about the allegation you’ve made about being raped.’ She paused. ‘Do you want to talk about it? I’d be happy to do anything I can to help.’
‘No,’ I said in a whisper, deliberately looking beyond her deep green eyes at a spot over her shoulder. ‘I really can’t.’
She seemed crestfallen, almost hurt. ‘Well, if you ever change your mind, I’ll be here, OK? And if you don’t want to speak to me, we’ll find someone else for you to talk to. A counsellor, maybe.’ She gave me a hesitant smile. ‘Just don’t feel alone, Hannah. We’re here to help you, we really are.’
I shuffled out of her office and into a corridor crammed with kids heading towards their next lessons. I’d wanted to tell her, but I knew I just couldn’t. I was in too deep, and no one, just no one, could rescue me.
* * *
By the end of that first week back at school, Tariq was regularly picking me up from near the top gates where, a lifetime ago, I’d smoked my first illicit cigarette. Sometimes Emma was with him, and together they’d take me off somewhere.
Normally at the end of the school day teachers would gather by the gates so they could watch out for any fights – kids were always fighting at our school, either among themselves or against the rival schools in our area.
I’m guessing that some of the teachers had seen me getting into a taxi, Tariq’s taxi, and had begun to put two and two together. They began to question me about it, but I’d just shrug them off.
I then made the mistake of telling Emma that some of my teachers were becoming suspicious. So, instead of being picked up at the end of school, I’d get a phone call or a text to tell me to come out fifteen minutes early.
Emma had hated the idea of me going to school in the first place: she couldn’t see the point of it. Her theory was that by me wagging lessons a quarter of an hour early, the teachers would lose the scent. They’d still be in class and I’d be off, not exactly free like all the other kids off wagging, but out of their sight, sitting in the back of a taxi taking me to a hell they couldn’t begin to imagine.
I’d feel a sense of impending dread as the last lesson of the day came to an end. I knew there’d be a phone call from Emma, or maybe Tariq. It was always a phone call; maybe they thought it safer that way, rather than leaving a trail of text messages.
It wasn’t difficult to leave early. The school regime didn’t help. You might have thought they’d lock the school gates so that once the kids were in they couldn’t get out. What they actually did was leave the gates open all day, so the kids could walk out whenever they wanted: otherwise they knew they’d kick off and they’d have to deal with it.
When it came down to it, the teachers couldn’t control anyone and they knew it. In fact, the staff lived pretty much in fear of the kids they were supposed to be teaching – they would be assaulted on a weekly basis, so you can’t really blame them. The school even gave up trying to exclude the tearaways because they realised some of them were getting excluded deliberately.
It was tough. There were kids at school with pretty chaotic backgrounds. I’d been given values by my parents, but those counted for nothing when I had the gang to contend with.
The sc
hool was like a war zone: so tough that they had a policeman on site who had his own office. Maybe I should have gone to him, but I never did.
I didn’t realise then, but Rochdale Social Services knew all about me by this time. Staff at my school – Miss Crabtree, I think – had started ringing Social Services to say I was coming in smelly and dirty and smelling of alcohol, as well as being picked up in taxis.
Social Services also knew about lots of other girls like me, and how they’d been exploited by similar gangs in the local area.
They’d known for years.
They knew because Jane and her boss at Crisis Intervention, Sara, kept on telling them, in report after report, letter after letter. And what had Social Services done for all those girls?
Nothing.
Some of the details about my case would have been put on Social Service desks within hours of me telling police how Daddy and some of the others in the gang had raped me. So it should have rung alarm bells with them, and it should have made them think of all the other cases of under-age kids being exploited by networks of paedophiles. And then they should have done something to try to stop it.
Actually, they did do one thing. That September, they held a strategy meeting at their offices in John Street, Rochdale.
It was either in that meeting, or else just before it, that members of the Safeguarding Children board were given copies of a letter sent to them by Sara. The letter, dated 10 September, marked ‘Private and Confidential’, was a plea for Crisis Intervention to be kept fully in the loop. It mentioned both me and Daddy. It also repeated something Social Services already knew – that one of the places Rochdale Council sent its young mums to live for a bit after giving birth was being targeted by predatory men, almost all of whom were Pakistani, who wanted these vulnerable girls for easy sex. These men were calling at a local single mothers’ housing unit, to either ‘visit’ girls, or else collect girls and young women.
Social Services, however, sat on their hands. They didn’t tell my parents any of what Sara had told them in her letter – Dad was on to Social Services by this time, telling them he and Mum needed help because they’d lost control of me and were worried. They said that for all that I might be unruly, they couldn’t do anything because I was fifteen, nearly sixteen, and therefore nearly an adult. In their minds, it was up to me if I was off with men – nothing to do with abuse, just me making a ‘lifestyle’ choice.
* * *
I’d convinced myself that Mum and Dad didn’t care; that they still just saw me as a wild teenager and didn’t have a clue about me being passed around for sex with the gang.
In fact, it had begun to dawn on them that Harry’s place was evil and they were beginning to get frantic. True, I’d stay at home some nights now, but would leave again when I got Emma’s siren call. They would hear my phone vibrating and count the minutes before I tried to bolt to the door and be away. I was so desperate not to upset the gang that I’d sometimes climb out of a bedroom window, shimmy down to the eaves above the front door, and run out into the night. Back to purgatory.
Dad would go to Harry’s house himself to look for me sometimes, though more often than not it would be left to Mum to reclaim her ‘lost’ daughter because he didn’t trust himself not to hit someone. She’d drive up and then wait outside in the car for a glimpse of me, because they’d always deny I was there.
One time she called at the front door to be told I’d left, but with the door ajar she could see me nipping out of the back door. She shouted at me to stop and managed to grab me and bundle me into the car. I went home that time, but soon I was back again, reeled in by Emma’s unhealthy control over what passed as my life.
In the early days, Dad had reacted to my swearing at them by throwing me out of the house – not in a, ‘Here are your belongings, now off you go,’ sort of way, but in an attempt to calm me down and shock me into thinking about how I was behaving.
Now he and Mum just wanted to persuade me to stay at home because they sensed something was horribly wrong. All these years later, they say they’ll never forgive themselves for not trying harder. But there was only so much they could do.
Some nights, when Mum and Dad would ask the police or Social Services to get me away from Harry’s place, the police might turn up, but they’d just put me in a van and dump me back at home. They never seemed to care whether I was OK, whether the gang had any hold on me. There was never any, ‘Look, sweetheart, if these people threaten you again, you’ve got to come to us.’
At first I had thought the police were like my parents, thinking it was only Daddy and Immy who were involved. But then I remembered telling them about being attacked by the other men as well, and about Emma, and how it all worked.
I felt betrayed by them, as though after all I’d been through I was just a joke to be laughed at – by the gang, the police, by Social Services. I was locked into the life Emma and the gang were forcing on me. Part of me told me it was my own fault for keeping on going back: I should have had more courage, or strength, or just common sense. I should have told someone rather than waiting for somebody to rescue me. But Emma had that hold over me and wasn’t about to let me go.
From that point on, I sank to a new level of despair. I was effectively owned by a gang who felt they were immune to justice.
For their part, the police either knew I was still being abused or should have guessed. They’d called at Harry’s place for the underwear they needed for forensics, and I’d told them how Emma had been controlling me for the gang. They also knew, as the autumn wore on and I remained at Harry’s place, that I was still massively at risk, because my parents would ring them in despair to ask them to bring me back from there. They’d do it, but, as I said, they never did anything to make me stay at home – or sit me down and ask why I was doing it. The police were the ones investigating Daddy over the rape, so surely they should have taken more of an interest in me? After all, I was the victim and the main witness.
Chapter Twelve
Don’t I Deserve Something?
And so the days rolled on. Some days we’d go back to Emma’s so I could change out of my school uniform, but other times we’d go straight to wherever Tariq and Emma had agreed to meet the gang. People have said since that kids shouldn’t be out that late, all indignant, thinking these things always happen at night. But this was in daylight, three o’clock in the afternoon, with me being picked up still in my uniform to be taken to God knows where, straight from the school gates.
If I did get a chance to change, I’d wear a tracksuit or jeans and a T-shirt. I deliberately dressed down, knowing that whatever I wore, it wouldn’t matter. My clothes came off anyway.
Emma would be trying to hurry me as I got changed, though sometimes she’d wait in the car for me outside Harry’s, chatting with Tariq while I got ready. Normally it would take about two minutes: no make-up, no hair do, not even the Poundshop powder I used as foundation when I could afford it. Anything not to encourage them.
Once I was ready, we’d get back into the taxi and I’d be driven to Rochdale, Oldham or wherever. I never went anywhere on my own; Emma was always there.
As soon as we got to where we were headed, I’d know what was coming and try to get it over with so I could go home. I’d go onto autopilot.
Sometimes we’d go to a place and stay there for a few hours while a succession of different men came to have their so-called fun. Other times we’d go somewhere, stay a short time, go back to Harry’s place, and then there’d be another phone call to her mobile and we’d be picked up again to go somewhere else. It could be anywhere, just as long as they were getting paid and Emma was getting paid both for what she was doing and for selling me.
Escort girls want to do it – and have the choice to do it – and Emma, by then, it seemed, wanted to do it. But for me it was rape, because I didn’t want to do it.
I knew from magazines that girls from other countries were trafficked into Britain for sex, and that they might
end up in brothels, unable to escape. These stories were quite high profile. But what about this story, that was happening to me? What was happening here was still trafficking, except there were no air fares to pay, no girls to pay. Domestic trafficking, as the police call it. And you still couldn’t escape because of what they’d do to you. It was ruthless and evil, and they didn’t care whether they were destroying the lives of kids like me.
I think if they were threatening me now, I wouldn’t believe it – at least not the worst of it. But at fifteen, I thought they were totally invincible and totally beyond the reach of the law. So when they said they’d burn my parents’ house down, beat the shit out of me or my parents, and rape my sisters, I believed them. And, as a kid, once you’ve convinced yourself that they’ll do what they say, they don’t need to keep repeating themselves: you see the threat in their eyes every time they look at you. It doesn’t go away.
With the men, it was always brutal, always at the most basic level that sex can be. They were animals. They didn’t bother with anything that might make it easier for me; nothing like using a lubricant. They were prepared to hurt me because all they wanted was what they’d paid for. I just had to suffer the pain. By then I wasn’t bleeding or anything any more, but because up to six men a night were raping me, one after the other, I’d often feel terribly sore inside.
They knew we weren’t prostitutes because they could have found those for themselves. They needed this specialised market that people like Daddy and Tariq, in their separate gangs, had carved out for them to enjoy: the forbidden market in which they could turn up at a stranger’s flat or house, violate an under-age girl – a white girl – and then go back to their wives as if nothing had happened.
I’m guessing that they’d see a prostitute as dirty and disgusting, but a young girl as clean, innocent and somehow pure. It must have been a turn-on for them – it was a turn-on for them, as some of them asked for even younger girls than me, younger even than Roxanne at thirteen.