Girl for Sale

by Lara McDonnell

  I didn’t want to bond with Noah because I was scared he would get hurt – I found it very difficult, having someone who needed me so much and trusted me to look after him.

  I had another problem, too. Chris had seen Noah once but was under police investigation for having sex with a minor. Mum had reported him when she realised I was seeing him before I fell pregnant, and for several months the allegation sat on file. But he was then arrested for another offence and the police decided to charge him with the sexual offence as well. I was called in to give a statement but Chris took it all in good grace and told me to be honest and to tell the truth about everything.

  Although I was not seeing Mohammed as much as I had before Noah was born, whenever I did, it was a big session or something serious happened. I tried to stay off drugs but found it very hard and eventually succumbed to the constant pressure.

  I had often been the gang’s drug-testing guinea pig and, when Noah was a few months old, they summoned me with the promise of drink and a new batch of crack. When I walked into the Riverside Court flat, Mohammed was sitting on the sofa in front of the coffee table, on which sat a bag filled with off-white granules.

  ‘We need to test this,’ he sniffed. I was weak-willed and I did – I hadn’t smoked crack for a while and, as soon as I inhaled, I felt my chest burn and my lungs tighten. But then, almost instantly, I felt light-headed and euphoric. The worries and stresses melted away.

  ‘What’s it like?’ asked Mohammed.

  I nodded and smiled, my eyes were rolling.

  ‘Strong,’ I said. The effort of speaking made me splutter but I didn’t care.

  He offered me more. I took it. Again, my lungs tightened. It became harder and harder to breathe – I felt like I was having an asthma attack and tried to regulate my breathing. Each time I inhaled my lungs burned but the drugs seemed to momentarily relax the tightness and so I continued to smoke them.

  Mohammed could see me struggling for breath and did nothing except offer me more. I was wheezing loudly and he laughed.

  I was in the crack den for what must have been a couple of hours and, as the drugs started to wear off, I realised I was in trouble. Struggling for breath, I knew I had to get away and so I staggered to my feet.

  ‘Where are you going?’ giggled Mohammed. He thought it was funny.

  I lurched out the door – I needed to get home and to get help.

  When the cold air outside hit my lungs I felt they were being gripped by a vice and then I really started to panic. I staggered the short distance home and fell through the door. Mum heard me collapse and rushed to help.

  Between gasps, I managed to tell her I had smoked crack. I genuinely believed I was dying. My heart was hammering inside my chest; I thought it would explode.

  ‘Goodbye, Mum,’ I managed to wheeze.

  She stroked my hair.

  ‘You’re not going anywhere.’

  She called an ambulance and, within minutes, it was there. The paramedics put an oxygen mask over my mouth and nose, and I was helped into the back of the vehicle. Mum and Noah came with me – there was no one to look after him. I looked over at him and his little smiley face gazed back at me quizzically.

  In hospital I was immediately put on a nebuliser and hooked up to a drip, which had an immediate effect. Already I could feel my chest start to relax. It hurt when I inhaled and I was kept in overnight. Jean came and got Noah, and Mum stayed with me.

  When I was feeling better and had eaten she tried to broach the delicate subject of what had happened.

  ‘Who did this to you, Lara?’ she pleaded. ‘Can’t you understand how much danger you are in?’

  But I couldn’t. I always had a distorted perception of danger – when I was younger and was taken on contact visits with Kirsten we would both run off and often ended up chatting to older men. On one occasion we had been lured into the cab of a lorry after striking up a conversation with the driver. He could have taken us anywhere, he could have murdered us, but at the time it never occurred to me that I was in danger: it was an adventure. Mum would tear her hair out with worry. After that episode she showed me a news report about a girl who had gone off with a man and was raped and killed. Weeks later her decomposed body was found in the woods.

  ‘Don’t you understand, Lara? This is what could happen to you.’

  But I didn’t understand and I didn’t actually care. Later in life I heard a theory that may have explained my behaviour. In the early years, when I was living with Terri and Shane, I was exposed to danger and fear on a daily basis. Most days my body was flooded with adrenaline to the point where I became used to it. Adrenaline acts in the same way as some drugs and people become addicted to it. Perhaps in those first years of my life, when my brain was growing, I became addicted to adrenaline and hence to danger.

  Lying in a hospital bed after the crack overdose I started to open up.

  ‘I think I’m getting addicted to drugs,’ I told Mum, adding that Mohammed had given them to me.

  ‘It was my choice to take it,’ I went on.

  Mum was in an awful situation: she couldn’t stand by and let me continue to associate with people who were supplying drugs to me but she knew that, if she went to the authorities without my agreement and willingness to provide information, nothing would be done and I would turn against her. She would be sending me back into the hands of the gang.

  ‘They are dangerous people, Lara – they don’t care about you.’

  She was right but I didn’t realise just how much danger I was in or how to get out of the spiral I was caught in. At the age of 16 I was becoming too old for all their punters – they wanted young girls so instead Mohammed had started to use me for his own gratification. I never gave a thought to what would happen when he got bored with me.

  While I was trying to pull away from the gang I was called to give evidence against Chris at his trial. I was required to give video evidence. The hearing was in Oxford and Chris was given a jail term after I explained that we had been in a relationship since I was 14. I explained that he was never violent or abusive and I was sad to see him go to prison; I knew I wouldn’t see him again and I also knew that he would not be involved in Noah’s life. There was still doubt that he was the father anyway. I made the decision to tell Noah the whole truth when he was old enough to understand and to let him decide at the right age whether he wanted to try to find out who his father was. At that point, I still couldn’t accept that what Chris had done was wrong and, no matter how much Mum tried to explain to me that he was an abuser, I couldn’t see him as one.

  I turned 17 and was seeing the gang less and less. Financially I was becoming worthless to them: I was too old for their paedophile customers and I was also becoming older and stronger. I wanted it all to be over and they could sense it – I was coming up with excuses all the time. Ironically, the maternal instinct that had deserted me early on was kicking in and I didn’t want to be away from my baby.

  The coercion that had worked when I was younger was no longer effective. Instead, it was being replaced by threats. They tried their best to keep me compliant with drugs and at times it worked. Mohammed even spoke to me about recruiting young girls for him. The idea sickened me but showed he was always on the hunt for fresh blood. I was strong enough to say no. There was definitely a change in the mechanics of control. I had a deep sense of unease – I knew they were capable of extreme violence and I feared not just for myself, but for Mum and Noah, too. The best course of action would be to try to keep them at arm’s length; to do as they told me when they were annoyed with me and hope eventually they left me alone.

  But they didn’t and when Mohammed called one day after a gap of a few months I felt it was best to go and meet him. My memories of that day are sketchy but I remember being taken in a car with him to a house in a place called Brasenose Driftway. Mohammed never drove, he got people he knew to drive him around and in this instance the driver was an old man he used as a courier. At some point d
uring the day I blacked out. Snatches of memory have returned to me since. I remember coming to at one point in a room: naked except for my bra, which was around my ribs. Lying down, I turned and saw Mohammed behind me, penetrating me, grimacing through his black, crack-addict teeth. When he realised I was conscious, he pretended to lie down and be asleep. I remember vomiting.

  Then I remember being at home, lying on the sofa. I remember Mum’s worried face. I remember paramedics, I remember an injection that jolted me awake and then I remember hospital, where someone told me: ‘You’ve overdosed on heroin. You are lucky to be alive – your heart stopped.’

  I was horrified – I had died and been revived. I’d never taken heroin and vowed never to try it because of what it did to Terri; I thought it was a disgusting substance. Mohammed had spiked me with it. I don’t know how much I was given but clearly it was enough to kill me. In hospital, one of the medics noticed I was bleeding and I felt pain below my waist. The horrific realisation dawned on me that Mohammed had given me heroin until I collapsed and then raped me. I wasn’t surprised by the depths of his depravity and I started to resign myself to the fact that the only way I would be free of him would be if I killed myself.

  Mum had told the police and they came to interview me. I didn’t tell them who I was with at the time and there were so many gaps in my memory I could see by the looks on their faces that they knew it would be hard to make a case stick. However, a quick-thinking medic had collected evidence and they did have two DNA samples. Subsequent investigations discovered one belonged to Mohammed; it was never discovered who the other one belonged to. It was obvious that something had happened but by then I was 17 so they couldn’t make a charge of sex with a minor stick. Eventually they decided there was no case.

  But that incident changed everything. Over the years Mum had mentioned on several occasions that, if I wanted to move away, she would happily sell the house and we could make a fresh start. I had never considered the option before: she was working and her life was built around Oxford. I didn’t want her to uproot and go but I’d had enough and my life was in danger.

  In hospital Mum mentioned it again.

  ‘You only have to say the word,’ she said.

  I looked at her. She’d aged in the years she had known me and I’d done that to her. She had stuck by me and never let me down and all I had done was cause her heartache.

  Overcome with guilt, I started to cry.

  ‘I want to move,’ I whispered through my tears.

  For weeks afterwards I couldn’t go out. I’d been raped repeatedly throughout my teens but this was different: I was traumatised by the thought that I’d been given heroin and by the evil of what had happened so I ignored Mohammed’s texts and calls, which became increasingly aggressive and incessant. He would call the house up to five times a day; he threatened me and he threatened Mum. I think for the first time he was worried about what I might do and this worry made him mad.

  ‘Answer me, you fucking bitch!’ he’d scream to my answerphone.

  ‘Get your arse to the flat, whore!’ he’d order.

  I was terrified. After the rape, I knew he would stop at nothing. I could easily have died and it would not have done the gang any harm if I had: it would have solved a problem. I’d just be another junkie who overdosed in a dingy crack den – a tragic, wasted life. The more I considered it, the more I thought it was a real possibility that they had purposely tried to kill me. They had threatened to do so on many occasions over the years. The older I got, the more my life took me away from them, and the more distance between us, the more dangerous I was to them.

  The final straw came when Mohammed threatened Noah.

  ‘You are going to die but, before you do, I am going to cut your baby’s head off and send it to you in a suitcase,’ he said.

  White and shaking, I came off the phone. By then the house was on the market but I didn’t know how long we would have to stay in Oxford. There was a ‘for sale’ sign outside that Mohammed would have seen and I was sure this had antagonised him even more.

  I walked into the kitchen where Mum was feeding Noah. He looked so small and innocent.

  ‘I want it to stop,’ I told her.

  And, for the first time, we went to the police together and I told them that I was being harassed and threatened. I gave them Mohammed’s name and the address of the flat.

  They acted quickly and took me seriously. I was half expecting them to ignore me but instead they hauled him in and told him that he was under no circumstances allowed to contact me ever again.

  I like to imagine how quickly the cocky demeanour evaporated from his smug, ugly face when he realised that he could no longer control the girl he had used as his slave for four years.

  Chapter nineteen

  CHOOSE LIFE

  We had several viewings and the house sold quickly. Mum had been there for over 15 years. She was surrounded by friends and I felt guilty that she was sacrificing all that because of what I saw as my mess. But she never breathed a word of regret and I think she was genuinely looking forward to a clean break.

  In the seven years since she had adopted me her life had changed beyond all recognition. We had both been through more upheaval and drama than most people experience in a lifetime.

  We set about deciding on where to move to. Both of us agreed it had to be far away and each weekend we selected a location and drove there to investigate. We travelled all round the country looking at towns and villages until we settled on a pretty market town somewhere in the Southwest. It felt friendly and safe and was far away from Oxford and the dangers that were there.

  Mohammed knew we were moving and his threats continued until the day we moved. But the police caution seemed to work because now he never turned up at the house. He phoned regularly and I told him that the police officer who arrested him lived next door – he believed me.

  The last weeks before the move were nerve-wracking. I tried to stay out of the way of people I knew as much as I could – I didn’t want to be asked too many questions. I was very careful who I talked to. I had a small circle of ‘good’ friends and a wider circle of ‘bad’ ones; I only told a few of the good friends and my siblings whom I was still in contact with on a fairly regular basis.

  Despite the nerves, I have fond memories of that time. Finally it felt like I was getting control of my life, something I’d never had. I was bonding with Noah too and became closer to Mum. We spent a lot of time packing up stuff and cleaning the house. I boxed up Noah’s belongings and looked forward to making a new start. I realised that the strange feeling I had in my heart was optimism – I had only felt it before on the journey to Oxford when I first moved to be with Mum, and I liked it.

  We were in such a hurry to move on that we didn’t have time to buy anywhere to move into; we just wanted to get out of Oxford. Mum had friends in the town we were going to and they had kindly agreed to let us stay with them while we hunted for a new home. We had no idea how long this would take but we looked forward to house hunting together. I didn’t care what kind of property Mum bought but asked that we move into a new one as I was afraid of ghosts.

  In the days leading up to the move friends helped us pack. A few had stuck by me through thick and thin and they knew some of what I had gone through. I knew I could trust my closest friends and they promised not to tell anyone where I was going. They knew I was moving because of Mohammed but they didn’t know the full story.

  As a leaving celebration we had a big barbecue the night before we left and invited all the neighbours. We had drinks and music and said goodbye to the people who had been with us through the worst of the bad times; it was an emotional night. They had all been so understanding and had supported Mum through the trials of the previous years. It was a proper send-off and I had mixed feelings because my life in Oxford wasn’t all bad. I had many very happy memories too and I couldn’t help feeling bitterness towards Mohammed for the way he had hijacked my happiness and affected t
he lives of so many good people.

  Having said my goodbyes, when the day came to leave I couldn’t wait to get out. As we pulled away from the front of the house for the last time I didn’t look back and, with each mile that passed, I felt a little lighter. If I had stayed, I would have died – I would have either killed myself or been killed by them. I think their plans would have been to keep me forever as their slave. I would have ended up like that other woman I met who worked for them or as a dead junkie, like Terri; I chose life instead.

  We got to our destination and helped the removal men unpack the furniture and boxes that we would have to leave in storage until we found a new home. That night I went to bed exhausted but happy. The following morning I woke up and felt free and safe. For the first time in many years I knew I didn’t have to worry; I wasn’t looking over my shoulder. I had grown so used to being under someone’s control the freedom felt weird. Noah was with me and we had our dogs and cat. We had a place to stay separate from the main house, which meant we had our own space and there was not so much pressure on us to move out quickly. I didn’t ask Mum how she felt at the time but I think she was relieved. She had given up full-time work and was working on a freelance basis. She had to go back to finalise some of the details and I think she was just desperate to get it all finished.

  We set about making ourselves anonymous. I got rid of my old phone and deleted all the ‘bad’ numbers from it so I wouldn’t be tempted to contact anyone. I got a new number, which I only gave to people I could trust. There was no way Mohammed could contact me. I broke off my links and we went ex-directory. We took our names off the electoral roll and I closed my Facebook account; we did everything we could do to disappear. I made sure the location services were always turned off on my new phone so I couldn’t be tracked.

  Then I changed the way I looked. I took my piercings out and I stopped wearing make-up; I dyed my hair – I reinvented myself. We didn’t tell the police when we left and by that point social services were off the scene as I was approaching my 18th birthday and no longer under the age of consent so they were not notified either.