Girl A

by Girl A

  Jane had been waiting patiently for my reply. ‘It’s pretty rubbish,’ I whispered. ‘I could do with trying to get my own place.’

  She said she’d have a word with a woman from Rochdale Connexions, who I’d already spoken to about money and my screwed-up home life.

  When we talked about how the case had been thrown out by the CPS, Jane said she was disgusted. She still looked at my file every day, she said, because it reminded her to keep going. She wanted to keep pushing and pushing for me, and not give up.

  Jane’s chat with Connexions meant I was put on the waiting list for a place at a single mothers’ housing unit – the same apartment block for young girls that back in 2008 was being targeted by abusers. Sara, Jane’s boss at Crisis Intervention, had told Social Services so in one of her letters, and who knows whether that was still the case when Chloe and I – a fragile, inadequate teenager and her infant daughter – moved in towards the end of June 2010?

  At the time I had no idea what potential danger I was in. I was just relieved and I think Mum and Dad were too.

  But I wonder now whether I and some of the other girls might have been targeted by the very people who’d abused the 15-year-old me; either them or members of a new gang.

  To be honest, there were too many bad memories around Mum and Dad’s place, and I’d liked to have moved away from the Rochdale area altogether. But I didn’t have the money, and the council would only let me move locally.

  Close to a park and Rochdale town centre, the housing unit didn’t seem a bad place to be because I was with other young mums trying to cope with things and to try to be independent. Well, not totally independent, because there are staff in the block twenty-four hours a day and CCTV to watch out for anyone kicking off.

  There are a dozen flats there, and mine was on the top floor, overlooking a park. It had just the one bedroom for Chloe and me, but that was fine. And at least, unlike the flats on the two lower floors, there were no grilles over the windows.

  I had a living room, and they gave me a starter pack to fit out the bathroom, the bedroom and the kitchen: a beige duvet cover with white circles, white sheets, pots and pans, cutlery, towels, toothpaste and shampoo, all of it from Asda. Next to the single bed I put Chloe’s cot; just a cheap one, wooden, from Argos.

  At first it felt good to feel a little bit free. Chloe and I settled into a routine that worked for us. But, after a few weeks, the loneliness started to kick in. There were other girls to talk to, I suppose, but I was shy and I found it hard. And with Chloe only being a baby still, I felt pretty much alone.

  It was then that I started to have a drink in the evenings. And then another. As a kid of fourteen and fifteen I’d been drinking normally like teenagers do – getting drunk on a Friday night, maybe, and having a laugh. Getting drunk that is, but not too drunk. With the gang, I’d knocked back the vodka as quickly as I could and it was this thought that remained – that alcohol could numb you.

  Now, in my own place, I started to drink more because I felt lonely. There was more, however – I started to rake over what had happened – or rather was not happening – with the gang. I felt abandoned, and it made me scared again because I knew the men were all still out there, and all still free. Then there was Emma. She didn’t know where I lived, but she kept emailing me to get in touch. She still must have wanted me back. I ignored her, but it just made me feel more scared.

  I started drinking more and more. Just like before, I drank to forget: the abuse, the abandoned case, everything.

  Some mornings I’d wake up and feel as though I was trying to drink myself into oblivion. It didn’t matter what I drank – anything really. Lambrini sometimes – you know, the cider: ‘Lambrini girls just wanna have fun.’ Except that this girl wasn’t having fun. Most of the time it would actually be the very cheapest cider I could find – White Star, which they sold around the corner and was a favourite among all the local alcoholics.

  I’d get a three-litre bottle and drink it on its own. On a normal day, I’d start drinking as soon as I’d finished college and collected Chloe from nursery. It could be about four o’clock in the afternoon or maybe even earlier. But I wouldn’t let myself get drunk until the baby had gone to bed. I wanted to drink, you see, but I didn’t want to be too drunk.

  So I’d pour myself a glass and then wait an hour for the next one – the way I was thinking by then was that messed up! I mean, who does that? Having one drink and then trying to wait an hour before having the next one?

  Part of it was because I knew I’d never survive if the drinking really took hold, but part of it was also because I wanted to be responsible for Chloe.

  Through no fault of her own, however, Chloe was part of the problem, too. I was with her 24/7 with no help and no one to talk to. All I had then were different staff workers coming in and out, just checking on me for this and that.

  In all the time I was at the housing unit, my mum and dad never came to see me. I thought that with no trial coming up, they must have gone back to seeing me as a prostitute (or, at least, that’s what my crowded head was telling me). After all, that was what everyone was saying, wasn’t it? They’d not disowned me, but I felt they weren’t really interested. I’d speak to them on the phone sometimes, and every now and then go around for tea. But they never came to the flat or offered to look after Chloe. That was part of why I was so depressed – my own mum and dad didn’t seem to want to know.

  All the other girls in the flats would be going round to their mum and dad’s, or else their mums would be coming round helping them out and taking the babies out. But my mum and dad never did any of that. I think I was a bit jealous. I was angry as well, that they were only like that because of what they thought I was. Thanks to Social Services, they thought of me as a prostitute and not a victim. That was the conclusion I reached; they might have had their own reasons.

  I drank because I couldn’t cope with all the different things going on in my life. Everything was just going around and around in my head. I was trying to live a life after being abused for months and months, but with nothing having happened about it.

  I gradually made friends with most of the girls at the housing unit. They didn’t know what had happened to me, and I didn’t know why they were there, either – apart from having got pregnant. Sometimes I’d wonder whether any of them had been caught up in the gang, but it seemed too far-fetched and, anyway, I doubted that any of them would have admitted to it. I wouldn’t have – it was too shaming.

  On my bad days, I’d just stare at the walls, completely ignoring Chloe. I’d feed her and clean her and dress her and all those other things, but too many other times I’d blank her out. It got so bad that she’d bang her head on the floor just to get my attention. I could see that her little heart was breaking. It breaks my own heart now to think of it.

  Somehow I just didn’t seem to have the motivation to do anything, and I started to feel depressed almost all the time. I could feel myself slipping down into a world away from normal society.

  I felt I was being tortured day in, day out. I still couldn’t believe that Daddy and Immy had been allowed to remain free for all that time. It was horrible. I thought, They’ve done this to me and they’ve won. Everyone thinks I’m a prostitute.

  And I was still worried that they would come after me. I was in Rochdale, where so much of it had happened. I was just worried in case I bumped into any of them.

  I actually did see one of the men, Saj, as I was pushing Chloe through Rochdale town centre in her pushchair once. My stomach dropped to the ground and I thought I was going to be sick. I remember turning around as quickly as I could and pushing the buggy as fast as possible in the other direction. I don’t think he saw me.

  I bumped into Emma once, too, in Rochdale town centre. She was with her mum, and her mum shouted across the street, ‘There’s the slut!’ They were calling me a liar, saying I’d tried to send innocent men to jail.

  And that, I knew, was exactly wh
at the rest of the world thought about me. That Daddy and Immy were innocent, and that all those other creeps, who would pay their money so they could rape me, were innocent, too.

  And so, on days like those, I would nip out to the shop around the corner and buy another three litres of White Star, put it in the fridge, and try to put off the moment I’d walk back into the kitchen area and open it.

  * * *

  Social Services knew about the drinking, and they gave me an alcohol worker who started coming once a week. She was nice enough, but all she really did was have a chat and give me tips on how to cut down. I knew, and I think she knew, that in my case especially, I had to do it myself. And I wasn’t ready to.

  The social workers also got me to go to a young parents’ group, where they help you to cope with your baby and train you in how to look after them.

  By now my little girl was walking. She’d started off by hauling herself up whenever she reached a chair, then gradually getting the coordination to set off. I used to love to see her tottering towards me, a big smile on her face, desperate to succeed, falling into my arms and giggling with pride and satisfaction. It made me feel good, too.

  The young parents’ session on 10 August 2010 should have been as dull and uneventful as the rest, but instead it was terrifying.

  I’d just sat down when the last girl in the world that I wanted to see walked in. Emma. I hadn’t even known she was pregnant.

  Her eyes locked onto me and I felt a wave of revulsion and fear. A moment later, I was flying out of the door, pushing my way past the staff who were trying to get me to stay.

  Stay in a room with the girl who’d controlled me for all those months? Never. Terrified, I fled back to the flat, looking over my shoulder in case she’d decided to follow me.

  She hadn’t, but the next day I heard that Social Services were thinking of giving her a place at my housing unit.

  I told them I’d leave if they did. How could I feel safe if she was there, too? Because if she knew I was there, so would the men. Thankfully, they held a meeting about it and decided she wouldn’t be allowed to come.

  Still scared, I rang Jane for an appointment, and met her on 12 August. We had a real heart-to-heart. I told her how upset I’d been to see Emma at the parenting session, and how scared I felt that she might already know where I was living. I told her how dangerous I thought Emma still was, even though she’d been turned down for the place at the housing unit: imagine someone like Emma having such easy access to vulnerable kids, all of them struggling, all of them broke, all of them weak enough to maybe fall into her trap.

  She simply nodded when I told her how I’d hated her at the time for telling people what was happening to me. But now I was grateful because it had eventually made my parents realise the truth. I felt different about other things too, including boys. I’d applied to university by then, and I told her how I felt I’d grown up loads since moving into the housing unit.

  ‘From now on I only want to go out with lads who are normal and have a job,’ I said with a laugh. And then, almost in triumph: ‘And Chloe will have to come first!’

  Jane reassured me that everything was fine between us, and then began talking about other things for a while – babies and stuff, families. And then, with one of the faint smiles that let me know she had something up her sleeve, she moved on to talking about the police, and how they wanted to re-interview me.

  I could hardly believe it. After all this time, and all the rejections and all the failings, the police wanted to take me through it all again. Two years had passed since I’d been raped and trafficked by Daddy; two years since I’d told the police about it; and two years since they’d collected the DNA evidence that proved I was telling the truth.

  But the delay had also given me time to ask myself about why they’d not brought the case to court. I knew some of the reasons, but I had also begun to wonder whether it was partly my fault. Had I not given them enough detail? Had I been too scared to give all the names, all the addresses, for fear of what they’d do to me? Should I have cried more? By the time I spoke to the police I’d become so used to it – desensitised, my dad says – that maybe I had come over as a kid who just wasn’t as obviously upset as they had expected I should be. I thought about that a lot, but the bottom line was, I’d done all the crying I could do.

  Sitting in Jane’s office that day part of me, an ever-increasing part of me, wanted to try one more time. In fact, if Jane hadn’t mentioned it, I realised I would have found a way of trying, anyway. It was weird. I think that sometimes in your life you have to be totally ready to do something, and it just seemed to be fate when Jane put it to me, as I was ready, finally.

  I thought it was high time Daddy paid for what he’d done, and that Emma paid for taking me to him, knowing I’d be raped. And it was time for Tariq, too, and all the others.

  Maybe I’d matured over the last two years. Maybe living on my own, being a mum, had changed my perception. I felt braver. Hindsight had given me a clearer picture of everything.

  Jane held out a hand to me. I held it, just briefly.

  In the silence, I thought about the girl who’d recruited me for all those men. I’d been away from Emma for ages by then, and I think I’d finally begun to understand the hold she’d had on me: that so much of it was down to my vulnerability at the time – my youth, my need to find some kind of life for myself, no matter how on the edge it might have been.

  The difference all the way through was that Emma loved the sex and I didn’t. In my mind, I had known it was wrong.

  ‘She liked to be abused,’ I said now slowly, out loud, ‘because in her mind it wasn’t abuse.’

  Maybe not just then, but with that realisation I could see a time when I’d stop being afraid of her and stand up for myself. She wasn’t my mate. Looking back, she’d never been my mate. She’d just used me.

  I realised I still hadn’t answered Jane’s question, about whether I’d speak to the police again.

  The more I thought about that, the more I felt I was doing the right thing. I knew that if I helped the police now I could help to save other girls from suffering the same fate as me.

  So in the end I said yes, I’d go ahead with it. Jane looked so pleased, and so sad, too, in a way, as if she was thinking of all the previous disappointments. But then, briskly, she picked up the phone, dialled a number and waited for it to be answered.

  ‘Hi, Susan,’ she said. ‘I’m with Hannah now, and she’ll be happy to meet you. Can we say next week?’ She glanced at me. I nodded. It was agreed.

  Chapter Twenty

  Calpol and Paracetamol

  A few days later Susan, the detective Jane had been speaking to, turned up at the flat and began to explain it all in detail. She and Jane’s boss, Sara, worked together on the Sunrise team – the people from different agencies who were trying to get a grip on things.

  I warmed to Susan straight away. I think she has that effect on people because she’s really level, really reassuring. She told me how she’d been investigating other cases, and when she looked back at the video interviews I’d done, she could tell I’d been telling the truth.

  She knew how much I’d felt let down, the way I’d not been kept informed the way I’d wanted to be. ‘We’re looking at it from a different perspective this time,’ she said. ‘I can’t give you absolute guarantees that we’ll get convictions, but we’ll be doing our very best to gather all the evidence together so that it can be presented in court.

  ‘What we’d like you to do is to be patient and just keep telling the truth.’

  Apparently other girls had come forward, so this time around there would be more witnesses, and not just me. She asked me if I’d be OK to go through it all again – my story was the biggest one, but with all the girls together, it all looked really hopeful.

  I felt an immediate difference between her and the police I’d dealt with before. It helped that this time around it was women officers who were dealing with
me. What’s the word? Empathy? Maybe it’s because Susan was a woman, with the same body, but I felt she understood more. I thought, They have the same bodies as me, and maybe more of the same emotions. I felt there was more of a connection, because no matter how sensitive a man might be, he’s still a man. And so were the people who’d attacked me.

  I wanted to know what Emma’s situation would be. ‘Will she be in the dock with the men?’ I asked Susan.

  ‘No,’ she said, gathering herself. She looked at me. ‘She won’t be in the dock because she’s a victim herself. I’m not dealing with her. One of my colleagues is doing that. But remember, Hannah, she was fifteen too, and a lot of the things that were happening to you were happening to her too.’

  Part of me was furious about that, but then I thought about how long Emma must have been involved with all the men. She’d have been really young when she started, maybe even younger than Roxanne and Paige when they got involved. Everything about her had been skewed. She’d always say how much she loved shagging all those men. But had she? Had she really? I just think she never knew anything different.

  I listened as Susan told me how she wanted me to give another video interview, and how important it was to think about what I wanted to say so I could give them as much detail as I could possibly remember. I told her I’d try, but that some of it had been so long ago I might struggle. But I felt I could do it.

  There would be a number of video interviews to get through, in fact. Over the next couple of months, I got into a routine of doing them after I’d dropped Chloe off at nursery. Jane would always be there, supportive, a shoulder to cry on in the rest breaks after I’d given the detail of all those harrowing attacks in such detail it made me cringe.

  All the way through, at the back of my mind, was the thought that my abusers deserved what, hopefully, was coming to them. Jane said I was brave, but to be honest I didn’t always feel it, and it still helped to have a drink.