Girl A

by Girl A

  By Christmas there was still no bump, though finally my breasts had begun to swell. How ironic, I thought, that I’ve had to get pregnant for that to happen.

  None of the men still paying Emma and Tariq so they could clamber on top of me noticed. I was still slim, still almost boyish. Only I knew, wincing as they assaulted me, and I tried with every sickening thrust to shut out the knowledge that I was carrying a child. I wanted to scream out, to protect my baby, but the paralysis I felt – the sense that there was nothing I could do to protect myself, let alone the infant – still gripped me. I pushed to the back of my mind that he or she was having to endure it, too.

  I was at least able to spend Christmas Day with my family. It wasn’t anything special for me, except a temporary reprieve from the gang, though everyone at home was glad to have me back with them. They thought things were settling down for me. Dad actually said, ‘This is great. We’ve got our girl back.’

  Mum and Dad gave me a new phone that Christmas – the latest Sony Ericsson with a really cool music player. It was black, an MP3 phone.

  Sitting around the tree opening presents with the little ones was weird. I felt totally out of place. I tried to enjoy it, but I kept thinking of what would be happening to me straight afterwards.

  I was back at Harry’s on Boxing Day and out with Emma and the gang that night. Juicy picked us up, and she told him I was pregnant as he drove. ‘Well, you don’t look pregnant,’ he said, once we’d parked. It didn’t bother either him or Boss. They just did what they always did to me, and when it was over took us home. Once again, I tried to block out the fact that I was carrying a baby.

  The new year began with me living partly at home but still in the clutches of the gang, still being hawked around at any number of seedy addresses. Emma, as manipulative as ever, was trying her best to keep her grip on me. Within a week or two of me getting the new phone, she’d stolen it and had then sold it. I knew she’d have wanted the money, but it also gave her more control over me. Even on the nights I wasn’t with her, she’d be messaging me on Facebook to say she couldn’t wait for the baby to be born. It just made me feel more bewildered and helpless than ever.

  But Jane was trying to help. She rang Mum and Dad one day, introducing herself and saying she’d been working with me over the past few months. Dad told her it would be fine for Jane to meet up with me later in the week. And, now that he and Mum had come down from their initial rage, they’d work with her. They’d do all they possibly could to keep me away from Harry’s place. They were on the team now: Mum, Dad and Jane. The three of them laid it on the line. Harry’s place was out of bounds.

  Jane picked me up early on the Friday morning so we could go for breakfast at the big Asda in Pilsworth.

  ‘What do you fancy?’ she asked, as we joined the queue.

  ‘Actually, I’m starving,’ I said. ‘Is it OK if I have the full English? Oh, and hot chocolate, please.’

  We carried our trays to a table in the far corner, her sitting opposite me. It started off with just chit-chat, but then she asked how I’d got involved with Emma, Roxanne and Paige.

  I hesitated, blowing at the froth on my hot chocolate, but then told her about how Emma had told me it was a girl called Carla who had got Emma involved with it all when she was still really young. Carla had then dropped out of the scene, leaving Emma to take over. I hadn’t known any of this at the time, I said, and hadn’t known how dangerous Emma was. She had broken me into her world by letting Daddy rape me.

  We talked about the baby and who the dad was. It was definitely Jake’s, I said. She asked if I was sure. I just shrugged.

  I was still struggling with that question – and the feelings it prompted – when Jane asked the question she’d asked before Christmas: would I go to the police?

  ‘Jane,’ I said, anger bubbling up in me, ‘I’ve already told you I don’t want to speak to the police. Emma would go mad, and they won’t go through with my rape case against Daddy if they think I’m a prostitute.’

  She told me I wasn’t, and then began to tell me about something called ‘a controlled abusive relationship’. As she spoke, she rummaged in her bag for a piece of paper. She began reading from it as she asked me a series of questions.

  ‘Just think about how things are between you and Emma,’ she said, before she started. ‘OK?’

  I nodded, wondering what was coming, trying to shut out the sight of a mum breastfeeding her baby across the room from us. I couldn’t bear the reminder.

  ‘Are you scared to say “no” to Emma?’ Jane asked.

  ‘Well, yes,’ I said tentatively. ‘I can never cross her, I wouldn’t dare.’

  ‘Does she upset you for no reason?’

  ‘Yeah, she’s always doing that,’ I whispered.

  ‘And do you find yourself saying sorry, when it’s actually her who should be saying sorry to you?’

  I nodded. I was always apologising to Emma. I didn’t even know why, really – not always. For getting upset, I supposed.

  ‘I’d apologise for getting upset,’ I told Jane. ‘Like one time at Aarif’s, the first time he … you know … did it that way. Darcy had run in, but all Emma did was laugh at me and then start going mad. She was telling me to go back in the bedroom and I was so scared I even said “please” to her – “please don’t make me, Emma! Please!” She called me pathetic, said I was a useless mardy ass. It was me who ended up saying sorry, just like always. And I’d always end up doing what she wanted me to do, even if it was, you know, that.’

  ‘And does she try to alienate you from other people? Keep you away from them?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, thinking of all the times Emma had taken my mobile phone, or come with me to my parents.

  Jane reached across to me, brushing my hand with hers. Then she looked back down at her sheet of paper and started reading more of the points there, about people who were abused and the ones that abused.

  She made it sound so scary but, deep within me, something started to click. The people she was talking about sounded familiar. Finally, I looked up, feeling, almost with a sense of awe, that I finally understood something about myself.

  ‘It sounds just like the way Emma is with me,’ I said. ‘She wants to make it so I have no one in the world but her.’

  Jane met up with me again the following week, in her office, after I’d had time to think about Emma and how she’d controlled me over all these months.

  ‘She’s a lot bigger than me,’ I began, timidly. ‘And she scares me. It’s like she gives me this look, and if I don’t do what she says I know she’ll batter me. That’s how she got me, and that’s how she got me to go with her to all those men. And once it started, I’ve not been able to stop it.’

  I told Jane how betrayed I’d felt by the first police investigation, but then, through my tears, I made the decision I never thought I’d make: I suddenly blurted out, ‘I’ll do it. I’ll talk to the police again.’

  And then, still doubting what I’d just said, and still wondering whether I’d really go through with it, I added, ‘But only if I can tell it to you first.’

  For the next two hours she sat there at her desk taking notes while I poured my heart out to her, in the sort of detail that made me cringe, and probably her, too. But she kept reassuring me that it would be fine and that I was doing the right thing. When I told her I felt like a prostitute, she said ‘No, you’re a child who’s been sexually abused and exploited.’

  Maybe I found it easier to speak to Jane, or maybe the police weren’t asking me the right questions.

  I gave her as much of an insight as I dared into what was happening to me and some of the other girls, and how Emma was operating.

  I told her about the time a girl called Alesha slept with two Asian men when she went out with Emma, and had had to go to hospital.

  ‘How do you know that?’ she asked.

  ‘Emma and Jake both told me,’ I replied.

  I couldn’t bring myself to tell
her what Harry was making me do whenever I was alone with him, but I whispered: ‘It’s not just with the Asians she’s doing things – and the same with Roxanne.

  ‘Both of them keep giving Harry blow jobs, you know, when they’re skint. She and Emma just laugh about what they do with Harry. They don’t see it as wrong.’ I paused, then continued, ‘And with the Asian men, both of them love the sex. On the way home, they’ll say it was good. They never seem to feel the way I feel …’

  I trailed off, but then added: ‘It always makes me feel so sick. I hate it. I always turn my face away.’

  She’d filled nearly seven pages by the time we’d got to the end. Each of them was A4, lined, filled with names and addresses, and the accounts of what the men had done to me.

  Together, they made it clear that the gang was still out there, still attacking me and other girls, whether it was in Rochdale or Heywood or beyond.

  I signed every page to say that what Jane had written was true. She made us both a cup of tea then – to calm us down, I think. It had been an emotional time.

  ‘Will I have to stand up in court?’ I asked, sipping tea.

  ‘It’s very unlikely,’ she said. ‘But the important thing is that you’ve been brave enough to get this far. I’m sure it will get easier now.’

  Through all this trauma, the baby grew inside me, innocently oblivious to the fact that it would be born to a mother who felt that she was totally inadequate and completely incapable of looking after it.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Speaking to the Authorities

  The statement Jane had taken down for me was dated 14 January. Just over a week later, on 22 January 2009, after she’d passed on copies to both Social Services and the police, I was on my way to do another video interview with detectives.

  Jane came with me to the police station. She was driving, and for most of the journey we were pretty quiet: me, pensive, wondering how on earth it would all go; her, I sensed, equally nervous, anxious to get me there before I changed my mind.

  Which, in my still-fragmented state, I was always likely to do.

  Walking into the police station, however, my mind switched on to what I was about to go through. I realised I was terrified.

  Jane waited outside while I went into the interview room. It was John again. He ushered me – a thin street kid in grey turned-up jeans, a low white top, dark chequered jacket and flat black shoes – into the same room. You still wouldn’t have known I was pregnant: I looked far too young and, anyway, the still-tiny bump was hidden by my top. My hair was short, but a strand of it sometimes flopped over onto my cheek until I’d brush it away. I sat on the sofa, my legs crossed, biting my lip.

  John started with some small talk, thinking it would put me at my ease: ‘What have you been doing since I last saw you?’ he asked. ‘Anything good?’

  ‘Not really,’ I said, thinking, If only he knew! ‘I’m not allowed at Harry’s house to see Emma,’ I said simply. And yes, I was still at school, though I hadn’t been going for a month because I was pregnant.

  ‘What have you been doing with yourself? Sitting around at home?’

  Mostly, I said, or going out sometimes.

  What we both knew was that the ‘going out’ had been with members of a gang of paedophiles.

  It wasn’t the easiest start to an interview. But it was a relief when he told me I wouldn’t have to talk about Daddy.

  I told him how I’d been switched from Daddy’s control to Tariq’s, how he’d already started picking me and Emma up before the main police interview I’d done the previous August.

  I’d seen him in the Balti House ages before, near the end of what had been going on with Daddy. He’d come in one night and just started talking to us. I think Daddy already knew him.

  ‘He asked us if we wanted to come to Tasty Bites later, and the next day Emma just said, “Tariq’s picking us up today.” It just started there. At first he’d take us for a drive, then to Aarif’s. He drove a silver minibus for Eagle Taxis. It’s car 40, the airport one with a picture of a plane on the side.’

  John asked: ‘How does Tariq know you’re prepared to sleep with men?’

  ‘Emma sorted it out,’ I said. ‘In his car, he’d talk about anything. What have you been doing? Where do you live? Who do you live with? How old are you? We told him we were both fifteen.’

  I recalled the time at Tasty Bites where about half a dozen of the men had been trying to persuade Emma, Paige and me to drink their vodka, and asking me whether I’d have sex with them. It was the time Emma had given me £2 to go home. Later, I told John, her fabulous boyfriend was talking about the money he got for us. I asked Emma what he was on about, and she replied: ‘Don’t you know? He gets paid for us shagging people.’

  John looked up from the papers he was shuffling in his lap and asked quietly, ‘Why did you do it, Hannah?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I replied. ‘I felt scared of Emma, and scared of Tariq as well. Because I’ve seen what he’s done to Emma and what he says to her.’

  I didn’t tell him, but I was thinking of the times I’d seen the two of them together, and how, for all her ‘strength’, all her control, Emma was actually subservient to Tariq – a bit like I was with her. It was as if she was really scared of him and had met her match. Tariq had an aura about him that said ‘Don’t mess with me.’ Emma did as well, of course, but at the end of the day she was still only five months older than me. To him, she was just a kid; a fat, difficult, lumbering kid, but still only a kid. A kid he was using, just as she was using me.

  Lost in thought, I dragged myself back to the real world: a police station a million light years from ‘Disturbia’ and gangs and Harry’s house. John was asking another question. I forced myself to focus.

  ‘Why go back to Tasty Bites?’ he was asking. ‘Why go back with those other men, given what you’d been through before?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said again. And then I opened up just enough to give him an insight into the way I’d been groomed.

  ‘Emma kept telling me to go,’ I said. ‘She kept telling me “They’re dangerous.” When I kept refusing, she’d threaten me. She used to say she’d tell my mum and dad. That she’d get me battered.’

  I gave John a list of the men who’d attacked me, and then he wanted me to tell him about each specific incident.

  I knew I couldn’t.

  ‘There’s too many,’ I said. ‘Tariq would just tell the two of us who we were sleeping with, and then he’d send us off. Afterwards he’d collect all the money. Usually we just had to give them a blow job and then lie down and let them do it,’ I said.

  Then I took a deep breath and said, ‘If we were on our period they used to tell us to do it up the bum.’ I told John I hated it, that it had really hurt, but that they used to tell me that I had to do it.

  John asked gently: ‘Did they take steps to make it not painful for you?’

  I shook my head, then forced myself to speak. ‘No,’ I whispered. ‘They’d just slam it in.’

  He asked me to rate how much it hurt me on a scale of nought to ten.

  ‘I don’t know … seven? eight?’ My head lowered, I started to shake. I felt my hair fall over my face. But I went on. ‘At first it was, like, really painful, but after they’d done it a few times it didn’t hurt as much.’

  If I thought telling him that was bad enough, there was more trauma to come: John wanted to go through the number of times each of them had attacked me, and how.

  ‘Aarif?’ he asked.

  ‘Every time we went there,’ I replied.

  ‘Up the bum?’

  ‘Eight or something.’

  ‘Megamuncher?’

  ‘About twice, because Emma always used to go with him.’

  ‘Joe?’

  ‘About six times or something.’

  ‘Anally?’

  ‘I think it was just once.’

  He asked about Cassie. How often with him?

  ‘Lo
ts of times,’ I said. ‘About twenty, thirty times because he used to pick us up in the car as well.’

  ‘And anally?’

  ‘I can’t remember.’

  ‘Saj?’

  ‘About ten times.’

  ‘Anally?’

  ‘About three times.’

  My head stayed down.

  * * *

  They let me have a break so that I could get some food with Jane. I started off telling her how embarrassed I’d been about some of the questions I’d had to answer, and then I told her that Emma and Roxanne had started to hang around with a girl called Nadine, who went to Roxanne’s school.

  ‘I’ve mentioned her to you before,’ I said. ‘She already does it – I’ve seen her at the houses I’ve been to. Her best friend does it as well, but Nadine’s involved with loads of Pakistanis. She tells Roxanne how much she loves them.’ I knew it would be more information for Jane to pass along, more evidence to build a case against these men.

  Just before I went back into the room, Jane told me to carry on being honest with the police. That’s what I did, but they didn’t ask me many more questions – and there was nothing about Nadine.

  The interview over, as we drove away I told Jane how at the main interview in August, once the tapes had been switched off, John had asked me if I’d done it for the money. He had also said this time he didn’t believe me when I said I was scared of Emma.

  Jane was furious. ‘How dare he?’ she said. ‘It’s disgusting that he would say that – even if he didn’t believe you, which obviously he should! That’s no way to treat a girl who’s been through what you’d been through.’

  I was truly grateful to her, but the memory of how my stomach and heart had both dropped the instant he’d spoken came flooding back. I wondered whether it was all going to happen again – that despite overcoming my fear, and choking on every word I’d spoken as I’d recalled the horrors I’d been through, the police still wouldn’t believe me.

  Was it going to be a rerun of what had gone on before when I told the police about Daddy? That I’d be dismissed and ignored by the very people who should be helping me?