Girl for Sale

by Lara McDonnell

  ‘Police!’ they shouted as they filed in. I sat on the arm of the sofa and smiled at them when they came bundling in the lounge. They spread out quickly and started looking for contraband. Alan had been caught outside. One of the officers came over to arrest me. I recognised him as Paul Phillips and started laughing.

  ‘What are you wearing all that for?’ I said, gesturing towards his plastic shield and helmet.

  ‘Try and take this seriously,’ he sighed and then tried to get me to open my mouth so he could check whether I was hiding drugs in it.

  The dog, an old Staffordshire Bull Terrier, was going mad in all the commotion. I was laughing, watching them as they hunted around for drugs. Eventually they found some small packets of powder behind photo frames and under a mattress in the bedroom. They also discovered a Samurai sword down the back of the sofa.

  I was taken down the station, questioned and put in a cell. The police were always very polite to me and looked after me whenever I was pulled in. They offered me some food and drink. Later, when I was being questioned, I saw Alan and we waved at each other. He had told them everything and admitted his role: he went to jail but I heard he went gladly because it got him away from the gang and, while there, he studied law.

  When I wasn’t with Mohammed or being put to work couriering his drugs, life with Mum became normal – or as normal as it could be. My existence had become compartmentalised. I didn’t like not having anything to do because I became bored easily and started thinking about the gang so I used to go out to work with Mum a lot to get out of the house and to get away from the pull of going to the drug dens. Whenever I was alone I felt vulnerable. Mum understood this and was good at distracting me. We used to have really lovely times – we’d go shopping or out for meals and to the cinema.

  I was two people, living two different lives.

  One life was lived as Lauren and I didn’t like her: she was evil, horrible, violent and addicted to drink and drugs. Foul-mouthed, she wore shed-loads of make-up and skimpy clothes; her hair was scraped back. She was not a nice person – she had no redeeming qualities. The other life was as Lara: she wanted a chance, she wanted to be happy and loved. If Lara and Lauren were two separate girls rather than sides of my personality, they would not have got on, which meant I was in a constant state of inner conflict. It was very confusing because I didn’t know who I was. I kept getting drawn to being Lauren because I felt I had no choice: she was a product of my unstable childhood and never had reason to trust anyone. She was always let down and that made her hostile.

  Lara was my new life – she developed as I grew up. Around family and decent friends I was Lara. Happy-go-lucky, friendly and open-hearted, she was loving and loyal and liked to have fun. Lara was the scared little girl who sat on Mum’s lap, sucking her thumb: she craved affection but then she disappeared for long periods of time. Lauren wanted to be needed too, but in a different way.

  Lauren belonged to the gang, she was their possession and plaything. When I was Lauren, my life was unimaginably dangerous – I still wonder how I never ended up dead. They used to test out new batches of drugs on me; they would get in a consignment and tell me to try some. I didn’t care if it killed me. Often I had suicidal thoughts – I wished I could fall asleep and not wake up.

  In turn the gang cared nothing about what happened to me or the people I knew. After the rape, Mohammed had become even more brazen because he knew that, even if Mum or I did go to the police, I wouldn’t go through with a prosecution – I was too weak.

  Mum knew there were bad men in my life. The jigsaw of who they were was beginning to piece together. She knew Bassam, or Sam the Rapist, as I referred to him. And she had spoken to Mohammed on the phone when he had called the house, which he did frequently. She had demanded to know who he was and what he was doing with me. She knew him as Mo; she also knew he was a drug dealer because sometimes he would stand on the corner of the road and deal drugs near our house. Several times she warned him off. In response, he threatened her.

  ‘I know who you are and I know where you live and, if you call my daughter again, I will call the police,’ she once told him.

  ‘Your daughter is a crack whore and, if you call the police, I will kill you both,’ was his reply. She hung up. She never showed if she was frightened or angry.

  Mum did report him but nothing happened because I didn’t co-operate and this only encouraged the gang to draw me in deeper.

  Chapter sixteen

  HUMAN TRAFFIC

  Mohammed kept me busy. He had a seemingly never-ending stream of customers to satisfy. Men would travel in from all over the country, from as far away as Bradford, London and Leeds. I was advertised through a network of people who all knew each other; ordered up like a takeaway via text messages. There were photos and obscene videos of me taken when I had passed out or been semi-conscious. These acted as a sick menu and were pinged out to punters before prices were agreed.

  The guys who abused me had no personalities. I told myself they were robots because the truth was too hideous to imagine. In reality, they were probably men with wives and children who held down regular jobs.

  Mohammed’s business interests were national. The range of the trafficking eventually went beyond Oxford and London and I was sent to other cities: Liverpool, Leicester, Bradford. One day I was told to be at the corner of my road. I left home and within a few minutes, a car pulled up. Mohammed was in the passenger seat. I knew the driver – a man who was often with Mohammed, and whom I assumed was something to do with the drug trade. There was another man in the back seat; he looked smart and older than the others. He seemed friendly. The car was shaking with bass from a rap CD that was blaring from the speakers.

  ‘Get in!’ shouted Mohammed.

  I did as I was told and the car sped off.

  ‘Where are we going?’ I asked.

  ‘We’re going on a business trip,’ said Mohammed. The others laughed.

  We were in the car for over three hours. I sat in the back. Cocaine and cannabis joints were handed around. I didn’t take any. The rap music got louder and, by the time we arrived at our destination, I felt nauseous – I still had no idea what we were doing but I understood that, if I was there, it would involve men.

  I looked at the road signs. We travelled along the M40 to Birmingham and then up the M6 until we finally stopped somewhere in the Northwest.

  We were in a residential street of good-sized houses. Mohammed told me to get out and the others followed. I followed him up the drive of the house we had parked outside. It was a sunny day and, as I walked towards the front door, I could hear music and voices. I could smell food; I realised I was hungry.

  Mohammed knocked on the door and a middle-aged Asian man answered. They exchanged a few words in another language and we were all led inside. It sounded like there was a party in the back garden of the house.

  Mohammed grabbed me and took me through to the back of the house, where a barbecue was in full swing. There were around 20 men there, ranging in age from early twenties to sixties. They were a mix of races but predominantly Asian, Arab and black. There were three other girls there, each one sitting quietly next to a man. They all looked like me: young. Obviously teenagers, they were dressed like me in short skirts, push-up bras, heels and tight tops. Each one had her hair scraped back and was plastered in make-up. I’d been told what to wear when I got the message from Mohammed. It dawned on me what was happening.

  I was there to be sold, as were the other girls.

  ‘Don’t talk to them,’ Mohammed warned. ‘And don’t wander off.’

  He put me on a sofa and got me a drink, which I accepted gratefully. I could feel eyes fixed on me; many of the men were staring hungrily. I felt self-conscious. As I scanned the room, I saw one of the girls had a baby. She was holding it and I assumed it must have been hers; she couldn’t have been older than 15. After a while I saw Mohammed deep in conversation with another man. They kept looking over at me. I’d been i
nvolved for long enough to know they were negotiating. After a few minutes, the man walked over to me.

  ‘Come on,’ he said, gesturing for me to follow. I looked over at Mohammed, who indicated that I should go. He took me into one of the bedrooms in the house, where I was abused.

  It happened several times that day, with a different man each time.

  Mohammed was in a good mood on the way back – it would have been a lucrative trip for him. We arrived in Oxford in the early hours; I’d been drinking all day to blank out what was happening. I was worse for wear and he ditched me by the side of the road, about a mile from my house.

  After that, there were other barbecues in other parts of the country. I worked out that they were like shop windows, where girls were promoted because, after each one, trade seemed to get busier. I never knew I was going or for how long, and they were the only times I ever saw other girls.

  Most of the time I was too out of my head to comprehend the scale of what I was involved in. It was organised and vast. There were hundreds of men and apart from the people in control, such as Mohammed and Spider, I never saw the same face twice.

  Back in Oxford, I was also expected to work more for Spider and Jammy. Most days or nights, after I’d been to Mohammed, I was sent to Cowley Road where they operated. Usually by then I was a zombie, out of my face. Spider didn’t care what state I was in; he put me to work whenever he had a punter. He had an evil stare that made me believe he was capable of anything. I couldn’t say no – he was terrifying.

  One afternoon I was in a kebab shop on Cowley Road and so drunk I fell asleep, slumped on the table. I’ve no idea how long I had been there when I was woken by someone yanking me violently by my hair off the chair. I yelped and instinctively lashed out at whoever it was. I was dragged up and out the door and I thought I was being kidnapped. As I was marched across the pavement to a waiting car, I screamed.

  ‘Shut up, bitch!’ I heard someone shout.

  Suddenly, as the fog of boozy sleep cleared, I recognised the voice: it was Spider. He threw me in the back of the car, where there was a man. Then he got in the front and waited while the man raped me.

  When he was finished they threw me out onto the road, where I sat in the gutter, crying. No one did anything. After a while, I walked home.

  I was just an object; I was grabbed from wherever I was and taken to car parks or guesthouses. Spider and Jammy didn’t sexually abuse me but they may as well have: they would pin me down and other men would rape me.

  I had no idea what a normal relationship was meant to be like. All I had known was older, abusive men and so, one day, when a man whom I knew bought cannabis from Mohammed approached me on the street, I thought nothing of it.

  I’d seen Chris Regis in passing on a few occasions. He looked like a thug; he was certainly much older than me. At the time, through the messed-up prism of my experiences with men, I thought he was attractive. A large, muscular black man, he dressed like a yob in baseball caps and trackies – the equivalent of mutton dressed as lamb. He worked as a security guard. One day when I was standing outside the Vodafone shop in the city centre we bumped into each other. We acknowledged each other and made small talk. He asked for my number and said perhaps we could hook up one day and so I gave it to him. To me he seemed like a decent man. I realise now how warped that was: I was 14, he was in his thirties. Although he didn’t know exactly how old I was when he started chatting me up it was obvious I was very young.

  When he called a few days later and asked to meet me I agreed. Chris invited me round to his flat and I met him there; he smoked cannabis and we had a drink together. He seemed genuinely interested in me and his flat was clean and comfortable. I spent a couple of hours with him, we talked, nothing else happened and he didn’t press me. When I got up to leave, he asked if he could see me again. I agreed.

  Later that evening I was at home in my room when the landline rang. Mum answered it and I could hear her becoming agitated.

  ‘She is 14, are you aware of that?’ she told the person on the other end of the line. ‘You are not to see her again or contact her, or the police will be called.’

  When she hung up, she called me.

  ‘That was a man called Chris,’ she said. ‘Apparently you left your phone at his house earlier. He was calling to let you know.’

  ‘He’s just a friend, Mum,’ I said defensively.

  ‘I doubt that,’ said Mum. ‘How old is he?’

  But I didn’t know; I explained he was just a friend again.

  ‘You might think he is a friend, Lara, but why do you think a man who is clearly older is interested in a 14-year-old girl, and what were you doing at his house? Don’t you realise how dangerous it is, going to older men’s houses?’

  Mum didn’t know the half of it.

  She told me she had arranged to meet him and retrieve the phone, which she did later that night. Once again, she told Chris in no uncertain terms that he was not to contact me again. He explained that he had no idea how young I was.

  Despite being told that I was a minor, he did contact me again and I began to see him on a regular basis. Perhaps I thought he could protect me. He was a big man who could look after himself and I was being sold and trafficked more and more. I was disappearing for days and returned from those trips covered in bruises and clearly drugged or drunk.

  Nobody except Mum was doing anything. The police and social services knew something very serious was happening but claimed nothing could be done because I would not co-operate. It was a failing that let the gang carry on with what they were doing with impunity. The authorities figured that, without a complaint, there was no victim and hence no crime. They tried to get me to talk but I wouldn’t, and so they raised their collective hands and did nothing. I have often wondered since why no one had the presence of mind to put me under surveillance. If they had done so, it would have been easy to see the horrific pattern unfolding. Instead, the authorities were getting desperate and the only thing they could think to do was to send me away again, but this time they sent me to a secure unit for my own safety.

  I’d been away for several days and returned battered and exhausted; I’d been sold repeatedly. Mohammed stayed with me all the time to make sure I was drugged and obedient. I wasn’t allowed to sleep and, even if I had, I was too scared: I was delirious with exhaustion and drugs. I remember snatches; I remember being in a room with several men. I watched them, they were chatting and laughing, and sometimes they tried to involve me. So I sat and waited for the inevitable.

  When I got back, the decision had been made.

  Mum explained to me what was going to happen: I would be taken away for eight weeks and given support and structure; there would be counselling. She was visibly upset when she was telling me this because it was an extreme step. But by then, I knew something had to change: if I carried on the way I was going, I would be dead within months. I looked horrendous, like a ghost. When I gazed in the mirror, I didn’t recognise the wretched creature who stared back through dead eyes.

  I sat down with Mum at the laptop and googled the term ‘secure unit’.

  ‘They can be to protect young people who are placing themselves and others at risk of harm through a range of behaviours. In these instances the unit is not used as punishment but to ensure the young person’s safety,’ I read.

  The description went on to explain that secure units were designed to protect children and to help them address the issues that result in them being there.

  The unit I’d been booked into was called St Catherine’s Secure Centre in St Helens, Merseyside. I would be staying in a lodge for eight weeks, which specifically looked after girls and young women who had been subjected to exploitation and violence in the community.

  I’d been placed under a secure accommodation order by the courts and, although the decision had been made for me, I wanted to go. When the time came to leave that evening I had packed my bag and was sitting outside on the pavement, smoking a
cigarette and waiting to be taken away by security guards. Both Mum and I were tearful – I knew this wouldn’t be an easy placement.

  I slept most of the way and got to the centre when it was dark. From the outside, it looked like a modern school or clinic. Inside was like prison – it housed runaways and so security was of course tight. All the doors were locked, sleeping rooms were locked, and the toilet windows were locked. There was an on-site psychiatrist and rigid rules to follow.

  One of the first things I had to do was undergo a physical examination in case I had any medical conditions that needed treating. This included taking a pregnancy test. I also had an initial psychological assessment, which involved a lot of questions and was carried out to deem whether I was a danger to myself and others.

  ‘Do you have any suicidal thoughts?’ the psychologist asked.

  ‘I don’t know, I’ve only just got here,’ I answered.

  The centre was divided into residential units in different parts of the modern building, which was roughly the size of a school: I was in Brontë Unit. There was another unit for mentally disturbed girls. Each unit had a living area with bedrooms, or cells as I thought of them, and a communal area with a television and kitchen and dining area. There were six bedrooms in Brontë Unit, laid out along a corridor; also an open unit that housed 24 children and young adults.

  I was taken to the unit where I would be spending the next two months, led through steel doors that clanged shut into a comfortable dorm with six bedrooms in it and a main living and kitchen area. My bedroom was sparse. I had a thin mattress on a metal bed frame, there was a metal shower and toilet and a CCTV camera on the ceiling. There was no TV or hi-fi, like in my room at home – they were privileges and I was told I had to earn them (it took about four weeks of good behaviour to earn a telly). My bedroom window had bars on it. Although every effort had been made to make the space appear comfortable and homely, there was no escaping the fact that there was no escaping.