by Girl A
Then what? Emma and the gang would drag me and my unborn child back into their dark world.
* * *
For all that I’d done my best to help the police, I was still living a double life. With the gang all still free, all still able to hurt me, I had to make it look to them that everything was normal: as normal as it could be in this world of theirs. I was trying desperately hard to find an escape route from Emma and the gang, but I was terrified they’d guess that I’d gone to the police again – just as I’d done in August.
And so it was that I felt I had no option but to allow Emma to give me to the gang the very same day I’d done the second video interview. I’d managed to talk to the police about Tariq and lots of others, but I couldn’t resist her threats that night. So immediately I was back in the worst of danger. This was rock bottom.
Perhaps even more dangerous than this, Social Services’ intensive support team closed their case on me that same day. They said Anne, my social worker, had told them that as far as she was concerned, I wasn’t at any more risk. Mary, from intensive support, said it was felt I had enough support from Crisis Intervention, and that in the future I’d also have Maternity Services. I could get back in touch with the intensive support team if I ever felt I needed them.
Miss Crabtree, my teacher, told Jane she was disgusted with the decision and very worried about the safety of both me and my baby.
For me, it felt as though every last flame of ambition to fight my attackers had been extinguished. What was the point? There was no escape. There would never be any escape.
* * *
I really can’t remember now, but one of the people I may have told the police about during that interview was Parvez. Or maybe he just came later – with so much happening to me, I simply couldn’t keep track of it all.
Emma introduced him to me as another of her ‘boyfriends’. By then, I’d learned that a guy she thought of as a boyfriend was actually just one of the gang she actually fancied.
We only went to his flat a few times. He’d sleep with Emma, and Roxanne or I would have to sleep with the other guy there. I slept with Parvez once. After that, he said he just wanted Roxanne because she was more into it; he thought she actually enjoyed it.
This didn’t stop her helping me to rob him one night – or at least try to. We’d been at his flat and Emma had rung a taxi to take us on to someone else’s house. Roxanne and I didn’t want to go so, just as we were leaving, I grabbed his wallet and we ran off.
We got out of the flat OK, but he caught up with us in the road. He slapped me in the face and took his wallet back. A minute later, Emma arrived in the taxi she’d booked, laughing at us.
Not getting away with the money meant Roxanne and I had to go with her, otherwise we wouldn’t have been able to get home. I think we went on to Billy’s house.
Either way, I was to have to tell Jane about Parvez for one very important reason.
Towards the end of January, the various agencies in Heywood and Rochdale – the police, the social workers, and Crisis Intervention – suddenly had something very worrying to concentrate on; something else that should have alerted each and every one of them to the increasing power of the gang.
On or around 26 January, two local girls had gone missing from home. A girl called Ruth had just vanished, and Paige had not come home after telling her family she was going babysitting.
Jane was really worried, and asked me if I knew anything that might help. We met in the Asda café again.
‘Well, I saw Paige getting on a bus with Emma,’ I said, once we’d got settled with some tea. I wanted to help, but was scared about telling Jane too much – especially about Emma. ‘But that was last week,’ I went on, a little too quickly.
‘Hannah,’ said Jane, patiently. ‘I know you still see Emma, so you really don’t have to lie to me.’
I reddened, then smiled at her in relief. ‘OK, OK, it was yesterday.’
She smiled back. ‘Thanks, Hannah. And what about Ruth? Do you know anything about her? Is she involved with Emma? With Paige?’
I shook my head. ‘Not that I know of,’ I said tentatively, holding out on her again.
Jane looked serious, studying my face, trying, it seemed, to gauge just how much I really did know.
‘Paige hasn’t been home in days,’ she said, ‘and people are very, very worried about her. So, come on, Hannah, tell me. You know how important this is.’
I did, and so I told her the bit that might help Jane find her. ‘She will be with Emma,’ I said. ‘And, most likely, they’ll be with Parvez.’ Once the words were out, I felt better. ‘I’ll take you there if you like – to show you.’
She declined the offer, saying it would be best to wait for the police to take me.
The waitress came over to clear up the empty plates then, so the conversation ended. As we headed off, out past McDonalds before stopping at the traffic lights beside the motorway, I kept thinking about Paige.
‘Jane,’ I said. ‘Will you ring me if she doesn’t come home?’
It turned out there was no need, because the next day the police found Paige – not at Parvez’s place, but at Harry’s. I never did find out what happened to Ruth.
* * *
I’m guessing Paige was found around the same time as I was going out in an unmarked car with a detective sergeant called Daniel; another police officer, Susan; and Jane.
I’d been at my parents’ house for a few nights, so Jane called there to pick me up and take me to the police station.
The idea was for us to drive around, with me pointing out as many of the gang’s hang-outs as I could.
It was frightening to drive around the town in the daytime, especially because we looked so obvious – two police officers, admittedly out of uniform, with a teenage girl and a woman who looked like a social worker. I kept thinking we’d see some of the gang because this was their territory.
I’d pointed out seven different addresses by the time we pulled back into the police station car park.
‘You’ve been very brave.’ Jane smiled gently as we came to a standstill. ‘You should be very proud of yourself.’
I didn’t feel proud.
It had been a huge thing for me to go out with the police, because I still thought that if the gang found out they would kill me.
It didn’t occur to me to ask the detectives for help because I simply didn’t know you could do that – however much I may have wished to. I didn’t know they could help a girl like me beyond doing the normal police things.
Once I’d told the police, and once we’d been out in the car looking at addresses, they set up a big surveillance operation. At one stage one of the detectives told me: ‘Even if we don’t get them to court, at least we’ll have disrupted them; at least they’ll know we’re on to them, and that may have a deterrent effect’ – as if surveillance alone could combat a gang who put no value on human suffering.
I felt sick – I knew that wouldn’t help me. Quite the opposite. In the days and weeks that followed, I lived in constant fear that I’d put myself in an even worse situation.
I felt I’d been let down so terribly by the police the first time around, I just prayed it wasn’t going to happen again. They wouldn’t abandon me a second time, surely?
Chapter Seventeen
Escape
Ultimately, it was my baby who ended the abuse that had taken over my life.
As February 2009 approached, the gang seemed to be growing tired of me. It’s one thing forcing yourself on a girl in a padded bra, but when she’s pregnant and her breasts have finally begun to develop there’s a problem: at least, for a paedophile. There were fewer and fewer phone calls telling Emma to take me to whichever address, and more for the new girls she was trying to recruit. If I did go, I’d hear members of the gang telling Emma she had to bring younger girls next time, and not one who was pregnant.
The baby had been growing in my womb for nearly three months now, content, obli
vious to the fact that he or she was the accidental offspring of an under-age girl whose only reason to carry on was to protect the life inside her. In quiet moments, I’d look down at the now distinct, visible bump and stroke it.
Whenever I went home to Mum and Dad I was still a nightmare: stubbing out cigarettes on the floor and the kitchen worktops, swearing and, one night, drunk, dancing in the front room and saying to my dad – I am so ashamed now to think of it – ‘Do you want me to dance naked for you, Dad?’
He had looked utterly appalled that I could have said so vile a thing. And me? The next morning I just thought: Your mind’s not right, Hannah. How could you have said that to your own dad?
It got to the stage where he couldn’t bear to be in the same room as me, and Mum felt the same.
I’d also scared both of them by saying the baby could have any one of five fathers. It’s not the sort of thing your mum and dad want to hear. They were worried, too, that I was still heading off to stay at Harry’s place whenever I could. I’d just wait for the chance to climb out of a window, onto the roof of the porch, and away into the night.
I still wanted to break away from Harry’s place, but the brainwashing effect Emma had on me was too strong.
Jane, wonderful, patient Jane, tried her best to help me find the courage.
A week or so before my sixteenth birthday, close to Valentine’s Day, the two of us were at Asda again, her drinking tea, me hot chocolate, when out of the blue she said: ‘Hannah, I know you’ve been going to Harry’s again – and I know you’ve been staying overnight there.’ She let it sink in. ‘So stop lying to me, and please, for your own safety, stay away from there. It’s all being dealt with by the police. Just let them get on with it while you concentrate on looking after yourself and the little one.’
She said she’d spoken to my parents, and that they were worried sick. ‘You do realise, don’t you,’ she said slowly, deliberately, ‘that even when you’re sixteen you can be referred to Childcare Services if people think you’re putting your baby at risk?
‘And you can’t expect your mum and dad to do all the looking-after of it once the baby is born.’
As she went back to sipping her tea, I tried to focus on the significance of what she’d just said. She was right – I knew I had to get away from Emma, from Harry’s place, if not for me then for the baby. It was doing me no good – and could I really picture a baby living there? The thought of it made me shudder.
As I thought about the baby, I tried to picture it – wondering whether it was a boy or a girl, and wondering, too, whether it was half-Asian. Another worry rose to the surface of my mind.
‘I’ve worked out my dates,’ I said, ‘and I’m really worried the dad might be one of those men. If it is, I won’t be able to feel the same about it – not ever, because I’d know it was from being raped. I’m really not sure I could keep it.’
For the next few minutes I sat there, morose, trying to block out the turmoil I felt about my baby’s identity.
* * *
My sixteenth birthday was actually a laugh. I spent most of it with Lizzie, heading off to Manchester on the bus and spending some money Mum and Dad had given me as a present.
We spent ages in Primark across from the Arndale shopping centre, with me eventually buying some pyjamas, a few tops and a pair of leggings. We had a KFC in the food court, chatting like two sisters should chat: about the baby, about the future.
At one point I remember thinking, This is normal. It’s what I should be doing – not meeting up with old men. On the way home, I thought about my life and how sick it had become. From somewhere, I began to feel a sense of resolve building inside me, telling the stupid, hopeless part of my mind that with the baby coming I really, finally, needed to break away from Emma and the gang.
But then came the following day.
I was over at my parents’ when, about one o’clock in the afternoon, Emma knocked at the front door for me. I answered it, and she sounded the way she always did when she thought my family might be listening – all cheery, all matey.
‘So you’re sixteen now, eh? Join the club.’
She must have thought the coast was clear, because she lowered her voice a bit and then said, ‘Right, are you coming? We’ve got people for you to meet, so let’s get back to Harry’s.’
She must have seen me hesitate, because she went on, louder now: ‘You don’t have to answer to your folks now. You can live where you want, sleep with who you want. They can’t stop you.’
I was about to send her away, but just at that moment I felt a rush of air as my mum came storming up behind me; I guess she’d been listening from the living room. The front door had only just been ajar, but she yanked it wide open, clawing at me and pushing me outside.
‘Go on, then,’ she screamed. ‘You go with her. You’re sixteen. You go off with your men – just don’t ever come back here!’
And with that she slammed the door, leaving me bewildered and frightened on the garden path. Emma just thought it was the funniest thing she’d seen in ages, but I was aghast.
‘Mum,’ I wailed. ‘Don’t do this. What am I supposed to do now?’
There was no reply. All I could hear was Mum crashing about upstairs. I sat on the lawn in shock and disbelief. Then, I heard her coming down the stairs. Again the front door was flung open and this time a bin bag was dumped unceremoniously at my feet. Some of my clothes spilled out as it landed.
‘Now, go!’ screamed Mum. ‘I’ve had enough of all this. Just leave us in peace!’
I tried to reach out to her, but she was gone. The emotion of what she thought she’d heard too much for her. Emma didn’t hesitate. Laughing, she bent down, picked up the bags and set off towards the road, shouting: ‘Come on, let’s go. Taxi’s waiting!’
Distraught, I followed, crying as I staggered away from my home and from my family. I’d wanted to stay; I’d dared to hope I could finally break away from Emma. Now I was heading back to misery with her because I didn’t know what else to do.
Back at Harry’s, Emma was soon on the phone to Tariq. I was in the kitchen, quiet, smoking, when I overheard part of the conversation. ‘It’s all right,’ she was saying, ‘she’s sixteen now. So they don’t have to worry. She’s legal.’ Her voice sounded cold.
With the call over, she came to find me, suddenly all breathless and cheery. ‘You’ll be fine here, Hannah. You and the baby can stay. Harry will give you the money for a cot, and we’ll get a new double bed we can share. I’ll help you get your address changed. We’ll sort it out tomorrow. You can stay for ever and no one will be able to stop you.’
But I realised I wasn’t listening to her. I was focusing hard on what she’d just said – and what she’d said to Tariq a few moments earlier. My mind flashed back to the times I’d been with Jane, when she’d spoken of her fears for me, the way she’d talked to me about controlling relationships, and how it seemed Emma wanted to isolate me from everyone else so that I’d have no one to turn to but her. ‘You have to really think about this, Hannah,’ she’d said. ‘Until you do, you’ll never truly break free.’
The words I’d overheard Emma saying to Tariq a few moments earlier bubbled up again in my mind. That I was sixteen now, so there’d be no problem with the men; that it would be totally legal for them all to have sex with me.
For ever?
I couldn’t bear that. I really couldn’t bear that.
* * *
The next day, Mum drove to Harry’s place, knocked on the door and dropped off another bin bag full of my belongings. I saw her and ran after her. She was just opening the car door when I got to her.
I was sobbing. ‘Mum, Mum, I don’t want this,’ I said, clutching at her arm, her shoulder. ‘Let me come home. Please!’
‘No,’ she said coldly, her voice at odds with the tears I could see welling up in her eyes. ‘You’ve made your decision now – and so have we.’
A moment later, she was at the wheel and driving a
way, leaving me standing forlornly on the pavement.
Thanks to Emma, I still didn’t have a phone, but that night Emma’s mobile rang and, as she answered it, she scoffed. It was Dad – he must have kept the number from when he thought she and I were just proper, ordinary mates. ‘Yeah, yeah,’ she said, ‘I’ll put her on. I’m sure she’d love to speak to you.’
Dad spoke to me for nearly five minutes. First, he told me to go where Emma couldn’t hear me, then he said he’d talked Mum round and they wanted to give me one last chance. ‘Come home now and we’ll take you back,’ he said. ‘But if you don’t, that’s it. For ever. You choose.’
A sob – more of relief than anguish – caught in my throat. So I could still go home! But I hesitated. I was more canny, now that I knew what Emma was about. I knew I had to throw her off the scent.
‘I can’t come home now, Dad,’ I whispered. ‘But tomorrow – let me come home tomorrow. It’s my scan …’
A plan had begun to form in my mind. I started to explain it to Dad. He was up for it, he said, but there could be no turning back. A few moments later he was off the line, and I joined Emma in the living room.
‘Got rid of him, then?’ she asked.
‘Yeah,’ I replied, as nonchalantly as I could. ‘They’re off my back now.’
But as she turned away, I allowed myself a faint smile. I glanced for reassurance at the two bin bags full of my clothes, lying by the front door.
I tried to make it as normal a night at Harry’s as it could be. Mercifully, there were no calls from the gang and I was able to slip off to bed just after 10 p.m.
‘It’s the baby,’ I explained to Emma. ‘I feel really tired.’
For a while I lay awake, holding the bump as I thought of the misery I’d endured those past seven months, wondering whether this was the moment I could finally summon up the courage to break free. Because that is what it would take – immense courage. I was still so scared of Emma, and of what she could do to me if I didn’t keep in with her.
Would she batter me, and risk hurting the baby? In my last few days with the gang, I’d begun to stand up to her. Being pregnant actually helped me, because I didn’t think that even she would do anything to hurt my baby. But how safe were my parents and sisters and brothers? How would the rest of the gang react? Would Emma just let me go now, after all this time?