Girl for Sale

by Lara McDonnell

  Bedtime was at seven and, in the evenings, we were allowed to watch television in the communal room and go out into the yard. I wasn’t allowed to wear the clothes I’d arrived in, just in case me or any of the other girls used the cord in the hooded tops and trackie bottoms to hang ourselves, or ‘ligature’ as it was known. All I had brought with me were trackies and they all had string waists so Mum bought me some new clothes with elasticated waists when she came up the next day.

  The rules were strict. There were levels of behaviour – one to four – and good behaviour accrued privileges. If I fought, I lost the privileges I’d gained, which included television time and exercise. Any infraction would result in my being downgraded a level. In the unit we weren’t allowed pens or anything sharp we could harm ourselves with and we had plastic cutlery at meal times.

  The days were filled with lessons, activities including arts and drama, exercise and counselling sessions designed to make you look at your life and think about how and why you behaved in the way you did. It was like a live-in school with teachers who came in.

  The unit was full of crazy girls and I felt exposed and vulnerable – I’d been in adult company for such a long time that I was mistrustful of anyone my own age. Most of the girls were runaways like me.

  Georgina was 15 and came from Manchester; she had HIV. She was so disturbed, she heard voices and saw things. She would post paranoid letters under my cell door telling me ‘they’ were going to kill us all but I didn’t know who ‘they’ were. Georgina stank of urine and it transpired that she had lots of sexually transmitted diseases. She had gorgeous long black hair, which she would not wash. In the end, I was the only person she got close to and she let me wash her hair. She’d been placed in care when she was very young. We had our differences and her moods swung wildly, but when she was stable we got on well. In the end, she confessed that she was being trafficked but I could tell by her attitude and the way she looked as soon as I met her that she was like me; she was also doing crack. She latched on to me and no one else.

  Soon after she arrived, we had a fight. She threatened my key worker, the woman assigned to look after my welfare. I got on well with her and was protective so I lost my temper and threw a chair at Georgina; I had to be restrained and lost my privileges. It took a couple of weeks to earn them back again.

  Georgina wasn’t really a danger to the other girls, she was more of a danger to herself. Sometimes she would be completely normal, other times she would babble incoherently. She used to talk about seeing rats at night, it scared the crap out of me. I was in the cell next to her and she would appear at the door. She was so white and, with her black hair, she looked like a ghost. I would tell her to be quiet.

  One day I woke up and she was gone – she had been sectioned.

  Holly came from a normal background and loved her mum and dad but got involved with the wrong people. She was white but spoke like a Jamaican and was very racist towards white people. We used to take the mickey out of her. Constantly trying to ligature, she was involved in a gang. Aged 15, she was very tall, about 6ft 2in. She wore her trackie bottoms rolled up on one side, like a gang member, but she was the least menacing person you could meet. That didn’t stop her trying to be intimidating, though. I got in a fight with her, too – she was trying to throw her weight around and I told her to stop bullying people. When she started to argue back, I told her I couldn’t understand a word she was saying so she tried to strangle me.

  After fights I never bore a grudge. It was a status thing – if I got beaten up, I got beaten up. I’d shake hands and that was it.

  Suzanne was 17 and beautiful. A little thug, underneath she was so kind-hearted – she had time for everyone. She lived with her mum and dad and partner in Norwich; she was only there for a couple of weeks.

  Then there was also Kerry who came from Wales and had gone crazy when her mum had a baby. She had mental health issues.

  We all became very close in the end.

  I celebrated my 15th birthday in the unit and we had crisps and did limbo dancing. We also organised and performed a musical show. I sang ‘Amazing Grace’. I liked the song; I remembered it from when I was made to go to Sunday School when I lived with Graham and Pauline. I wasn’t a bad singer.

  We had some fun times in the unit. One of the workers there was also an extra on Hollyoaks and a dead-ringer for Ricky Whittle, who played Calvin Valentine. He was gorgeous and girls would argue on purpose in the hope of being restrained by him. Along with most of the girls in there, I had a crush on him. He was very good at his job as he would always be able to calm the girls down if they needed restraining. I used to tell him how fit he was and he would get embarrassed. We watched him while he was eating his lunch and he would get really embarrassed and leave the room.

  I had regular counselling sessions in which the counsellor tried to discover what was making me angry – I was so guarded that the probing made me angry! The female counsellor tried her best. She was non-judgemental and acted concerned. She asked a lot of questions and tried to get me to talk about Terri and Shane and my background, but I didn’t divulge anything – I liked to be left alone by the adults. I was starting to form relationships with people my own age, which I hadn’t done before, and the staff were really good and noticed this and encouraged me.

  I can’t say that the eight weeks were a pleasant experience but at the time they were what I needed. It was a life-changing experience, mainly because I was around kids my own age and in a strictly structured environment, where it was hard to stray. There I had to confront my demons because there was no running away. Away from drugs, I got healthier. I put on weight and had a routine: I got up, went to lessons, had lunch and went back to lessons. Good behaviour was rewarded, I learned. Eventually I reached the top level of privileges and was allowed out of the unit into town with a member of staff to have my cigarettes. That happened the week before I left and I was the only one in the unit who made it that far.

  The secure unit gave me space for reflection and for Mum and me to rebuild our relationship. We hadn’t really got to know each other – I’d only been with her for a year and a half before Mohammed groomed me. Mum would have known more of Lauren than Lara. In fact, the only time I was ever Lara was when I was with her. She saw what I could be, which is why, no matter what strain she was put under, she never gave up on me.

  Mum came and picked me up. She brought the dogs in the car to meet me. It was lovely to see her, and lovely to be going home. There was an air of optimism on the journey: I could see a different outcome for me, I felt much better and more positive about my situation. I felt older and stronger. At that stage, if someone had asked what was happening to me, I would have spoken to them.

  In the unit, perhaps for the first time in my life, I saw a brighter future with Mum. I was focused on the there and then and I hoped everyone had gone away and forgotten all about me by the time I got out. Deep down I knew they wouldn’t have and there was a nagging fear in my gut: I was nervous about leaving because I knew what I was going back to.

  With hindsight, I wish I’d stayed at the unit longer. If only I’d been there for a few more weeks, I probably wouldn’t have become involved with the gang again.

  Chapter seventeen

  A HOPE

  Things did change for a while when I got home. I got a place at a private tutorial college to try to catch up on my schooling, of which I had missed several years. More than any subject I enjoyed art; I was good at it and I enjoyed it, too. It was the only thing I ever stuck at and maintained an interest in. Mum loved art too – it was something we had in common and together we would visit galleries around Oxford. I was not at the college for long, though: away from the confines of the secure unit, I had trouble maintaining a routine. It was not the sort of place I enjoyed. It was structured and I didn’t like being told what to do. I found the subjects boring and I had no respect for the teachers. I was supposed to be there to do my GCSEs but, after a few weeks, I began
to skip lessons.

  I also had an Outreach worker assigned to me. Her name was Alexa and it was her job to try to keep me interested in education and maintaining some kind of continuity in my studies. I saw her once a week and went to an education centre. Alexa used to take me out on educational trips. They were more like fun, however, and we went to places such as zoos and museums.

  Mum was gently encouraging but could see me already sliding back into old habits. Although I’d been away, in Oxford nothing much had changed. It didn’t take long for Mohammed to start to get in touch. The texting began and I tried to ignore it, but the messages became increasingly threatening. For outsiders it may be hard to understand why I kept falling back in with the gang. I was brainwashed and I was ruled by a mixture of fear and warped loyalty. I felt I belonged to them, and I knew that even if I changed my number they knew where I lived and would come and collect me.

  ‘Do you want everyone to know what you are?’

  ‘Don’t ignore me, bitch.’

  I started to panic – I knew he would turn up at the house and so I went to see him. At first, he didn’t ask anything of me: he gave me drink and I accepted. The next time he gave me drugs and, within a few days, I was back under the fearful spell.

  Finally the stress took its toll on Mum. She’d been battling against me and the system for so long, crying out for action and trying to be heard so it was inevitable that her health would suffer.

  I was at home one day with a friend and Mum arrived home early from work. She was acting very strangely.

  ‘I must go and make some muffins,’ she said.

  I looked at my friend and frowned – Mum didn’t seem quite with it.

  She fussed around but didn’t appear to be achieving much and was confused by what she was doing.

  Mum is a good cook and, when she came out of the kitchen an hour later with the worst-tasting muffins I have ever eaten, I knew something was wrong. I have no idea what she put in them. She started trying to explain what she had used but she kept forgetting and getting her words jumbled. It was such odd behaviour that there was undoubtedly something seriously wrong with her.

  ‘Mum, are you OK?’ I asked.

  She looked frightened.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ she answered.

  And then I noticed that her face was starting to droop on one side.

  That’s when the wave of panic hit me. She was having a stroke and I knew enough about strokes to realise how serious they were. I must have seen something on TV about them once.

  ‘Mum, what’s wrong? I’m scared,’ I cried. ‘You can’t have a stroke!’

  I always knew I relied on Mum and for years I had taken her for granted and thrown all her love and care back in her face, time and time again. In those moments, the realisation that she would not always be there to pick up the pieces hit me like a sledgehammer in the chest.

  ‘You can’t leave me!’ I sobbed.

  Terrified, I ran to get help from Jean, our dependable neighbour, who came in and called an ambulance. There was little I could do to help and I was in such a state I would have caused more disruption, so it was decided I would stay at home while Jean would go with Mum who was taken to hospital. I didn’t know whether she was going to live or die. She was gone for a couple of hours and the wait for news was excruciating. My friend stayed with me and tried to reassure me that it was probably nothing.

  When Mum walked through the door later that evening, carrying fish and chips, I almost collapsed with relief. Jean was with her and explained that she had suffered something called a transient ischaemic attack, which is a mini stroke. It was only a minor one and, thankfully, she would recover fully. Mum had been driving when it happened and had returned home, disorientated.

  I didn’t know how to react to this close call and, instead of telling Mum how much I loved her and how worried I’d been, I got angry. That seemed to be my default emotion. Everything made me angry and, despite the anger management classes at the secure unit, I had trouble overcoming it. I felt angry that I relied on Mum and terrified that I could have lost her. That fear made me angry and the anger seemed to drive me back to Mohammed and Spider.

  A few things did change, though. After the secure unit, the trafficking didn’t start again. I believe it was because I was getting old; I was now 15. Instead, I was sold in Oxford by them. And increasingly, Mohammed began to sexually abuse me himself. Each time he made me feel dirty and worthless. I wanted an escape and I found it in Chris, who, despite being warned off and told my age, continued to contact me.

  I saw more and more of him and our relationship developed into a rough approximation of boyfriend and girlfriend. He was 32 and I was 15. It took me many years to understand that my relationship with Chris was abusive and that he was a paedophile. At the time, I was so brainwashed and so used to being with men far older than me that I couldn’t see anything wrong with the situation. I convinced myself that Chris cared for me and, in his way, he did. Perhaps he was just as warped as I was. In my eyes he was kind-hearted, fun and bubbly. And, most importantly, he wasn’t violent and didn’t force me to do things I didn’t want to do.

  He had four kids by two different women, he worked as a labourer as well as a security guard, and he lived by himself. Chris knew I knew Mohammed and he also knew Mohammed was bad news and dangerous but he wasn’t scared of him. I don’t know if he ever realised I was being exploited by Mohammed. I never told him but he did warn me not to see him and also told Mohammed how old I was. Partly he confronted Mohammed out of concern for my safety, and partly for selfish reasons: he was possessive and didn’t want me seeing anyone else. His intervention on my behalf did nothing to scare the gang off, though – Mohammed simply gave me a slap for getting involved with another man.

  Around this time, there was another older man in my life whom I cannot identify for legal reasons. I saw him on a few occasions while I was seeing Chris, whom I discovered later was also seeing other girls.

  I would go to Chris after I’d been with Mohammed. He would cook me food and straighten me out, as I was usually drunk and high. It was my first proper relationship but I didn’t have feelings for him: I wasn’t attached, he was someone I could go to.

  Chris never tried to hide me away, which is why I now wonder whether he had convinced himself that there was nothing wrong with seeing an underage girl. We went out on dates – we went to the cinema and the park, for meals and we had picnics. I always felt uncomfortable when we were out because I knew people would be looking at us. It was obvious he was much older than me and I was also worried that one of the gang would spot us. Not that Chris would be concerned – he showed me attention and he got me away from the drugs for a while.

  I never thought of the future and took each day at a time but Chris was hopeful that things would develop between us: he thought we were going to be a forever couple. He told me he loved me, I laughed at him.

  He bought me nice clothes as gifts and I felt that he was a decent guy; he had genuine feelings for me. The age gap didn’t shock me, it didn’t even register – I knew it wasn’t normal but then again my life had never been normal.

  A year after I had got out of the secure unit, that was my life. Periodically I was with Mohammed: when he beckoned, I went running. I was taking fewer drugs and I was in a relationship with an older man, sometimes seeing another. While I never allowed myself to feel positive, my life felt more stable than it had for a long while. I was taking more care of myself and had started to look less like a drug addict. And then something happened that changed everything. It was Christmas 2007; it had been a lovely festive season. Mum and I spent time with family in Somerset. She always made sure Christmases were magical. When I first went to her, I was never able to understand or enjoy the wonder of the festive season – I didn’t like surprises, I had no sense of wonder. If there were presents in the house, I would find them and then argue with Mum about having them there and then.

  ‘But you’ve bought it
, why can’t I have it now?’ I would complain. Eventually she left Christmas and birthday presents at her work.

  The Christmas in question was perfect. However, after New Year I had started to feel sick, mainly in the mornings. For the first few days, I convinced myself I had picked up a bug, but the nausea persisted and I began to worry.

  I had convinced myself over the years that I could never become pregnant. Too much damage had been done. Although I wanted to have a family in time, I thought that was another part of my life the gang had stolen from me.

  I continued to feel out of sorts and eventually I told Mum, who advised that perhaps I should take a pregnancy test. She remained calm and supportive but I can imagine inside she was thinking, ‘Whatever next?’ I never denied that I was having sex with someone, even though I was underage.

  Mum bought the test and was with me when I did it. We were in the house in Oxford. It was a crisp January day and my heart was pounding as she and I stood in the kitchen and focused on the little white plastic stick I held in my hand. The blue line appeared very quickly. I thought I was going to pass out and then I burst into tears. At first I wouldn’t believe it, and then I wanted to do another one just to be sure.

  ‘We’ll wait another couple of days and I’ll do another,’ I said. Instead, I waited a couple of hours and did one and again it came back positive. The following day I went to the doctor and he confirmed that I was eight weeks pregnant.

  I didn’t know what to think: it was a huge shock. There were so many questions going round in my mind. Mercifully, when I was abused, the men always wore protection. It appeared to be an unwritten rule. There were two men who could have been the father: Chris and the other man I had seen occasionally. I believed it was Chris, and I knew Mum would want to know. I could hardly keep it a secret – but did I want a child?